No 64 bits option for Windows in Virtual Box

[LienRag]

I'm stuck with a Windows machine on which I don't have the admin password, so I created a Mint 18 64 bits VM with Virtual Box.
Now as an exercise I'm told to create a Windows 7 VM, so I installed VirtualBox on Mint (I may have made a mistake since I first installed the package virtualbox, which wasn't recognized after installation, either by the Cinnamon launcher nor by CLI - even "which virtualbox" returned nothing; after what I installed virtualbox-qt) and started to create the Windows VM on my Mint VM.
But I couldn't find a "Windows 7 64-bits" option on VirtualBox 5? Nor any windows with 64 bits?

I checked the web and apparently it was a problem with VB4, but it should have been solved by now?
Some advised to enter the BIOS, but I can't do that in my Mint VM...

PS: YES, I checked - twice - that Mint is actually a 64 bits version.

[Fred Barclay]

H LienRag,
Virtualbox does not provide full functionality for what you are describing (running a VM inside a VM). Unfortunately, this means that you cannot run a 64-bit VM inside another VM. The hardware requirements for running a 64-bit OS are not emulated or passed to the first VM, so it cannot host a second, 64-bit VM inside itself.

You could, however, run a 32-bit VM inside a 64-bit VM (and possibly inside a 32-bit VM as well).

For more technical details, see
https://superuser.com/questions/312433/ ... al-machine (third answer)
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20589
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/4032

Have you considered creating the Windows 7 VM inside your host Windows OS, the same way you've created the Mint VM?

[deleted]

You probably need to enable the virtualization setting in the BIOS.
-H

[Cosmo.]

In short: Nested virtualiation is not implemented in VB and it will not get implemented in the foreseeable future. (See last comment).

[LienRag]

OK thanks all.

Yes, I finally did a 64 bits VM directly on the base windows 7 OS, but it's no fun...
Especially, I want to test some features of a Windows VM on a Linux host, in order to be able to help people that I advised to get rid of Windows on their machine (i.e, not using dual-boot but installing only Linux) and only virtualize Windows when they have an application that doesn't work on Linux.
I would also like to test things like KVM and QEMU, which I can't do on a Windows computer.

I succeeded in creating a 32 bits Windows VM in my Mint VM but don't really get from the links that Fred Barclay provided if it's a lost cause ("it will be too slow for any practical use" as a comment says) or if I can test what I want on it, renouncing 64 bits VMs for the time being.

Or would VMware work better to allow nested 64 bits VMs?

[o-l-d]

I tried Virtualbox on a laptop with Intel DuoCore that allowed 64-bit install of either Win or Linux as host or main OS but since virtualization wasn't supported by the processor (not even in bios) I could NOT create 64-bit vm only 32-bit. I then installed VMWare Workstation and tried again. With VMWare I was able to create either 32-bit or 64-bit vm both Win and Linux. Virtualbox is great software being that it is open source and free but VMWare offers more options, but sadly is not free and open source.

[LienRag]

I guess I'll have to try VMware then, however it makes me cringe to use non-free software...

I thought also of using Xen as first guest instead of Mint, but I can't find a ISO for Xen?
Or am I wrong in thinking that Xen is a stand-alone supervisor? I never used it and learned about it only a week ago.