How to install an OS in Boxes from a DVD

Ask Fedora
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1

Hi,
I still have an install disk for Win7, and I would like to install it in Boxes, but I can’t figure out how to do it. If I select the DVD I get a list of folders and files to select, but none of them are an iso. All the documentation seems to indicated that it is possible to install an OS from a disk, but how?

All advice gratefully received.

I’m running Fedora 38. KDE PLasma desktop.

2

There should be a setup program you can launch on it. Or you can make an iso of the DVD?!?

3

You can generate the ISO image of your DVD using dd:
dd if=/path/to/your/dvd of=/path/to/output/file.

You may need sudo for it to work.

Reference: Ripping DVD to iso - Accurately - Ask Ubuntu

4

The disk itself is the iso.
One may be able to run setup.exe or similar from the root of that disk to perform the install, or as noted above make an image of the disk by using dd.

I don’t think microsoft has the downloadable iso available any more for that old an OS, though If it can be found then that is another option.

5

Yes sure, on virt-manager you can add the optical reader as the ISO source, I don’t know if it is possible on gnome boxes, hence the suggestion to dump the DVD to an ISO file.

1 Like
6

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think the idea of copying the DVD to a disk file should work. There is a setup.exe but if I select it in Boxes it says “operating system can’t be found” and doesn’t do anything. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell Boxes to just use the DVD.
Well, tried copying my disk to my hard disk. That didn’t work. Found a place to download win7, and that didn’t work either. Finally resorted to Virtualbox and installed win7 from the DVD. But then I found the program I wanted to run on it wouldn’t run on win7 anyway. So I’m stuck with win10. Too bad really, I think win7 was the best OS M$ every released. Thank God for Linux.
:-\