THANKS! Your confirmation Really helped, giving me reason to try again.
It's interesting, or puzzling, or Both... I should have shut V/Box down between tries, and ***maybe*** even rebooted between my attempts to get Win11 installed in a VM. I knew that my first attempt was going to be iffy, since I was trying to install to an MBR .vdi disk that I converted to GPT & with EFI now turned on. I had tried a few times to get that Win10 VM switched over to GPT & EFI but could never get it to boot. I wanted to use GPT & EFI because my guess is that eventually V/Box will support Win11, and that part of the requirements couldn't just be added later. Unlike my first attempt, when I tried installing Win11 to a new VM, Win11's setup never said the VM would not meet the hardware requirements, but then crashed with the same fatal error. When I tried again today I first found that the new Win11 VM settings had changed (!) -- it was set for Win7 instead of Win10 for example. Like your workstation I have 16GB RAM, and based on your success I reduced the VM's RAM to 4 GB, like the rest of my VMs -- I had upped it originally, hoping for some reason that that might help get Win11 to install. But the important thing is it did install & run successfully.
The reason that I wanted to use that Insider Win10 VM, is that dating back to the original Win10 previews or betas, it's been activated but I never had to supply a key. When I set up the new Win11 VM I used the same account as that Win10 VM, and of course it was unactivated. I turned EFI on in that Win10 VM's settings, removed the Win10 .vdi file, & attached the new Win11 .vdi. It wouldn't boot however, so I attached an ISO created with Macrium Reflect 8 Home, booted to that, and ran the boot repair tool. The initial restart from that ISO crashed, but afterward booting to Win11 worked fine (?). At first the Win11 VM showed that it needed activation, but I had to get the virtio network drivers installed, and then clicking the button to activate, it connected and activated.
Oracle’s documentation suggests the best way to get optimal network performance is to use the Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net) adapter type.
In the Settings dialog, click Network in the list of options on the left.
Adapter 1 should be enabled as part of the default VM configuration. Make sure that the Adapter 1 tab is selected. You can select another adapter if you have more than one configured.
On the adapter tab, expand the additional settings by clicking Advanced.
Using the Adapter Type dropdown menu, select Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net).
Click OK to commit the change.
Now start the VM by clicking Start in the right of VirtualBox Manager.
Log in to Windows and notice that the network adapter is no longer working.
Make sure your VM is still selected in the list of VMs on the left of VirtualBox Manager.
On the right, look at the Storage section and find the Optical Drive. It’s usually attached to SATA Port 1. There you will see either Empty or the name of an attached image file. Click [Optical Drive] and then select Choose disk image from the context menu.
In the file selector dialog, open the ISO file downloaded in the previous steps.
The name of the ISO file should now appear to the right of [Optical Drive].
in to your Windows VM right click the Start menu and select Device Manager from the menu. You will need to be logged in as an administrator to install the driver.
In Device Manager under Network adapters, you should see an adapter that is highlighted as not working. Right click the adapter and select Update driver from the menu.
On the Update Drivers screen, click Browse my computer for driver software.
Click the Browse button to the right of Search for drivers in this location.
In the file dialog, make sure that the optical drive is selected and then click OK. It should be listed as CD Drive.
Make sure that Include subfolders is checked and then click Next.
Windows will automatically find the right driver on the disk image and install it. You will need to confirm the installation of the driver by clicking Install in the Windows Security dialog.
petri[.]com/how-to-improve-network-performance-in-windows-virtualbox-guests
github[.]com/virtio-win/virtio-win-pkg-scripts/blob/master/README.md
One curiosity is that the new Win11 VM still has the old Store, & updating the store's apps didn't help [neither did repairing or resetting the Store], but hopefully that'll come around and get added in the future. I ran the app: WhyNotWin11, which reports the VM is missing TPM, Secure Boot, & Direct X 12. I attached the Win11 .vdi to my regular [non-Insider] Win10 VM, where I deleted pagefile.sys & swapfile.sys, ran defrag & Microsoft's Precompact, then shut down the VM, and compacted / copied the .vdi to backup -- it came in at 12 GB, v.s. 11.5GB for my bare Win10 Insider VM. Right now by choosing the .vdi, & turning off EFI as needed, I can run both Insider versions of Win10 [for Win10 21H2] & 11... If it continues to update next week when a new Win11 build comes out, I *may* go ahead and change the BCD so it will dual boot Win10 & Win11.
Again, Thanks.
