In the process of trying to install a copy of Windows 8.1 64-bit as a guest on my Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit machine I ran into a problem. After mounting the *.iso and starting up the VM, instead of being greated with a pretty Windows install GUI, I saw this:
Your PC needs to restart.
Please hold down the power button.
Error Code: 0x000000C4
Parameters
0x0000000000000091
0x000000000000000F
0xFFFFF80213D5DA80
0x0000000000000000
Which I found to be very disappointing. A little searching showed that there was already a solution if you were running as a Windows guest and Windows host, but it also surprisingly works in Ubuntu!
First we need to run the virtualboxmanage command and have it list all of the VMs. You can see, I’ve named my VM “Tomato8”:
$ vboxmanage list vms
"Tomato8" {89fc5582-b49a-432f-be6f-534f4876f302}
Now using the exact name of the VM that you want to install Windows 8.1 on, run the following command:
$ vboxmanage setextradata "Tomato8" VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1
After that you should be ready to install Windows 8.1! It seems that for 64-bit versions of Windows 8.1 your CPU needs to support the CMPXCHG16B instruction.
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