For those who pay more attention to Microsoft than I

[Sketcher]

My Google-fu has failed me. I'm looking for a Windows 7 Anytime Upgrade from Home Premium to Professional or Ultimate. Are they even still being offered? I tried running Anytime Upgrade, but it won't go further than, "You might need to change locale and language settings to purchase Windows Anytime Upgrade online." These are both set.

My reason for wanting to upgrade: I want to enable Intel Virtualization Technology for multi-core, 64-bit VirtualBox instances within Windows, and I do not want Metro. Home Premium can't seem to handle that, it crashes hard when I have it enabled. VirtualBox has been crashing on me in various 64-bit Linux distros when I don't have it enabled.

 

[adrianmonk]

They still offer the anytime upgrade. However their cart provider is very flaky.

I have tried to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 Professional for a client and the payment always fails. I even had the Amex rep on a conference call with the Microsoft support tech, and the charge request never actually made it to the card provider.

I tried again a month later, still failed at exactly the same spot.

What seems to be the problem with Virtualbox ? What Linux distributions did you try ? Maybe I can help you out. The Hyper-V service within Windows is not exactly a speed demon.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

My reason for wanting to upgrade: I want to enable Intel Virtualization Technology for multi-core, 64-bit VirtualBox instances within Windows, and I do not want Metro. Home Premium can't seem to handle that, it crashes hard when I have it enabled. VirtualBox has been crashing on me in various 64-bit Linux distros when I don't have it enabled.

I guess I don't need to ask you this but, have you enabled the Intel Hypervisor setting in your BIOS? VirtualBox will not work until this is activated.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

I have tried to purchase an upgrade to Windows 8 Professional for a client and the payment always fails.

Microsoft rejecting customers money, what is the world coming to?

The Hyper-V service within Windows is not exactly a speed demon.

And, what did you expect?

 

[Sketcher]

What seems to be the problem with Virtualbox ? What Linux distributions did you try ? Maybe I can help you out. The Hyper-V service within Windows is not exactly a speed demon.

OpenSUSE 12.2 64-bit, and Linux Mint 13 64-bit. What happens is I start up a new virtual machine, and when the instance is supposed to switch to the boot loader, the entire system does a hard reset without any warning.

I guess I don't need to ask you this but, have you enabled the Intel Hypervisor setting in your BIOS? VirtualBox will not work until this is activated.

By Hypervisor, I assume you mean Intel Virtualization Technology (There is no separate option for Hypervisor.)? If so, no. Because when I enable it, Windows crashes in a similar way upon boot, I don't even get the chance to get into VirtualBox. When I don't have it enabled, both OSes boot fine, and I can run VirtualBox in Windows OK - I'd like more available cores and 64-bit instructions for them, though. What I would rather not do is toggle the setting in the BIOS every time I change the OS I am booting into.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

Yes, I meant VT. Have you looked into a BIOS update as this may cure the crashing during boot with VT enabled.

 

[Sketcher]

Yes, I meant VT. Have you looked into a BIOS update as this may cure the crashing during boot with VT enabled.

I have not. I suppose I could see about that, but not having power redundancy makes me nervous about that.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

...not having power redundancy makes me nervous about that.

I have updated many BIOS's here, in the middle of rural NZ where the power goes off twice a month on average. Never been caught yet but I guess there's always a first time. I must admit I do tend to whilst a BIOS update is in progress

 

[Sketcher]

Well, there happened to be a BIOS update, so I bit the bullet and flashed it - so far, so good. I haven't been able to duplicate the error since.

I may still be interested in the upgrade for the higher cap on RAM, though.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

Cool, I suggested the BIOS update as it tends to be a common issue when VM's don't work or crash

I've never needed above 8GB RAM on the host when running several VM's but that depends what you will be running.

 

[paul1149]

BIOS flashes have saved many a machine around here. A few went under in the process, but they were pretty much on their last leg anyway.