Opened 8 years ago
Last modified 8 years ago
#15098 new defect
Windows VM defaults are well below the required minimum values to run the OS
| Reported by: | Fake-Name | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Component: | other | Version: | VirtualBox 5.0.14 |
| Keywords: | vm defaults | Cc: | |
| Guest type: | other | Host type: | other |
Description
Basically, If you're creating a Windows 7 VM, the default settings for the allotted RAM for the VM is 512 MB.
Windows 7 has a minimum required RAM for a 64-bit install of 2 GB. (see [here](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements)).
It's probably about time to upgrade the VM defaults to at least the minimum required values to run the OS that VirtualBox already has logos and everything for, and has been available for 6 years now, don't you think?
If you're installing windows 8, it properly sets the default to 2 GB.
Additionally, the default HD size is *also* really, really tiny. W7x64 requires 20 GB, and with a default of 25 GB, that's basically zero headroom, and the OS alone puts you right at the 80% disk occupation point where you start getting a lot more fragmentation. Defaulting to a disk size of 100 GB would also probably be a lot more sensible.
We should probably update the defaults but I'm not sure about the examples you provided. 512MB is not enough but installing of Windows 7 with 1GB definitely works and with 1.5GB it works quite normal. Microsoft will most likely round up such values because it is very unusual to have hardware with less than 2GB these days and of course they don't want to support Windows on ancient hardware.
The problem with insufficient default values for RAM is even more present for Linux distributions. Fixing this for Linux is more difficult because there we have to distinguish between older Linux distributions and newer Linux distributions having the same name (e.g. ancient Ubuntu vs. recent Ubuntu).