15 minute guide to Virtualbox Windows 7 RC1 and your Mac

So this follows an earlier post of mine about Virtualbox and running Windows XP on a Macbook Pro. Virtualbox is a great piece of software for running virtual operating systems on another machine (like runing Windows 7 on a Mac OSX).

Today’s guide shows that you can be up n running with Windows 7 RC in about 15 minutes - thats got to be good ??

So Grab your Windows 7 RC1 ISO file from the Windows website, grab a copy of Virtualbox for Mac and get going. Please keep your Microsoft Windows 7 product key handy.

Virtualbox - Setup a new Windows 7 Guest OS

The latest version of Virtualbox already has an option for Windows 7 so just select this.

Set your RAM to at least 1GB as recommended by Windows

You can use an existing Windows Virtualdrive if you wanted (as an upgrade) but I prefer to create a new one

Then go to your Settings and mount the Windows 7 ISO file which is what you want to start when you ’turn on’ your virtual PC.

Now just run that Virtualbox Windows 7 guest and it will start the installation process.

Configuring the Windows 7 and Virtualbox Guest Additions

Guest Additions is the nice little Virtualbox package that allows seamless inter-operability between Windows Guest and the Mac OS for the Mouse and also for cut n paste for text.

But when you are setting up Windows 7 guest in the mac osx, you will need your Product Key that Microsoft gave you - and you can’t cut n paste it -

The latest version of Virtualbox fixes issues in previous releases where the internet wouldn’t work if you were using a Macbook .. nice one thanks 🙂

also in the latest version, the Virtualbox Guest Addtions are back in the menu .. so once Windows 7 is running go to Devices menu > Install Guest Additions

So that’s it - you’re now setup with a Windows 7 guest with a Mac OSX host using Virtualbox - go enjoy those new Windows things

see also - How to setup Winxp guest on mac os x

Meet the author

Damien Saunders
An experienced management consultant and business leader interested in digital transformation, product centred design and scaled agile. If I'm not writing about living with UCTD (an autoimmune disease), I'm probably listening to music, reading a book or learning more about wine.