There are a few die hard Win7 users here (I am among that number) so to run software designed for later versions of Windows I have a Win11 virtual machine set up specifically for that reason. The only two caveats is hardware depended software (e.g. Line 6 Helix or Focusrite Solo) are not supported and drive mappings must be done via the command line due to the NAT scheme VirtualBox uses. I have a Win11 micro PC set up for situations where direct hardware connection is necessary.I've been using VirtualBox for years and years. It and the Extension pack are free and runs smoothly on Win7.Essentially I'm running Win11 as an app instead of an OS and I don't have to trash half my paid for software to shut the "Win7 is dead! upgrade to 10/11!" crowd up :rolleyes: . It is fairly easy to set up. I've put together a walk-through listing the steps. Setting up VirtualBox is relatively quick and easy, it's installing Winbloat 11 that takes so damn long.:mad:http://www.therathole.org/win11-vbox/

Nice! Which version of VBox are you using? The tutorial does not mention the version at all.The last one I've successfully installed under Win7 is v7.0.8 - and I've noticed severe slowdown of all my VMs there, compared to v6.1 branch. Later ones wouldn't even install.... also, for someone that would like to try this route: with VBox v7.0.8 you have to use older Guest Additions from v7.0.6 and NOT from v7.0.8, otherwise most OSes will be unstable / prone to crashing.

Oh my! Inspired by this (not mentioning the version), I've just tried to install v7.0.18 under Win7 and it simply works! That's great news for all Win7 freaks - I've simply given up on this over a year ago, thinking that VirtualBox wouldn't work under WIn7 ever again (its not 'officially' supported for ever longer than that). The slowdowns are still there for me but it is the compatibility that matters the most.

Nice! Which version of VBox are you using? The tutorial does not mention the version at all.The last one I've successfully installed under Win7 is v7.0.8 - and I've noticed severe slowdown of all my VMs there, compared to v6.1 branch. Later ones wouldn't even install.... also, for someone that would like to try this route: with VBox v7.0.8 you have to use older Guest Additions from v7.0.6 and NOT from v7.0.8, otherwise most OSes will be unstable / prone to crashing.ms-dfavV 7.0.18 r62988 (Qt5.15.2). Smooth as silk even with the Guest Additions installed. Pack 7.0.18. I may play around with some Linux distros but I'm not going ape. Too many guitars to play to fight with operating systems.

Got a screenshot of Win11 running in VirtualBox on Win7 with the VB versions mentioned above running SF. Now when SF abandons Win7 I won't have any issues and I only have to look at Win11 when I use SF.Additional video resolutions were available (at 1920x1440 right now but I have a 58" 4K monitor). Audio (for SF "download complete" notifications) took a little tweaking. Neither possible without the Guest Additions.Windows network shares are a 50-50 crap shoot but in the guest window under Devices --> Shared Folders --> Shared Folder Settings it was easy to "map" a drive to my video library for downloads. Only caveat is drive letters are assigned in reverse starting with Z which I've not found a way to change yet. You can even use mapped shares on the host as if they were local drives so you can map a video library/video download folder on a host mapped share.e.g. \\SERVERNAME\SHARE --> Host Mapped Drive V: --> VM Shared Folder with the drive letter VB assigns.The VMs are housed on a 1TB SSD so the VM loads quickly. I've not noticed any sluggishness yet. Time will tell.

Additional video resolutions were available (at 1920x1440 right now but I have a 58" 4K monitor).NewMelleProvided that the guest additions are working correctly on your Win11 VM, you should also try at least two more things:- 'View -> Auto-resize Guest Display' will adapt the VM resolution on-the-fly to the VM window which you can resize freely- 'View -> Seamless mode' is even cooler - it will hide the VM desktop as transparent so it will look like your StreamFab is running locally. For me it looks perfectly well on Win7 VM, some slight issues with window shadows under Win10 VM. Hopefully this also works in Win11 VM. Beware, your VM window will have its menus hidden so you will need to use the keyboard shortcut 'Host+L' to exit from this mode.There are many more viewing modes (remote ones, scaling ones, multiple monitors, can screen record, etc) and - in general - VirtualBox is very configurable and powerful (the most under-utilized and useful at the same time feature are the 'snapshots' which are similar to savegames but for the state of the VM and with branching for different adventures and quests :) ).In general it has a very well done and competent 'UserManual.pdf' - reads like a fairy tale :)Only caveat is drive letters are assigned in reverse starting with Z which I've not found a way to change yet.NewMelleThis is very simple, you should just use a drive letter of your choosing followed by a colon under 'Mount point' like 'D:' (instead of '\' in your screenshot) and it should map the directory under the D drive letter. It works even on a 'live' VM without a reboot under Win7 and Win10 VMs - should remap the paths automatically. I don't have a Win11 VM to try it though.

The view options sound pretty cool. I'll give them a try. :) It is normally minimized when I'm using it. Open Shell, Explorer Patcher, WinAero Tweaker and Window 10 Shut Up make it much easier to look at though. Out of the box however....Snapshots tend to hang or take forever. I used them quite a bit at first when the test builds of Win10 (which I had to support) were available and sometimes it worked, others it just hung forcing me to kill it. I blew a lot of things up during that period. :cool: 7Zip was quicker, robocopy even faster than that. I have plenty of disk space so I normally resort to robocopy now. It tries to create the snapshots but most of the time just sits there at 0%. Oddly Linux build snapshots almost always worked.Never thought to use a drive letter in the mount point. I saw "Mount point" and my brain was thinking Apache. Doh. Works like a charm. :D Thanks!The Additions appear to be working properly and fixed the resolution limitations and fixed the no audio passthrough problem. I still have the audio "crackle" bug but only using sound for notifications so it''s not a major issue.I hadn't used VB in some years and it seems to be far less buggy and sluggish than it was then. There again the only guest OS I'm running is Win11 but now that I'm retired and not required to devote my spare time to familiarizing myself with work related technologies I'll probably play around with some Linux distros as well.I did test SF in the VM and it behaved just as it does natively on Win7.

Snapshots tend to hang or take forever. I used them quite a bit at first when the test builds of Win10 (which I had to support) were available and sometimes it worked, others it just hung forcing me to kill it. I blew a lot of things up during that period. :cool: 7Zip was quicker, robocopy even faster than that. I have plenty of disk space so I normally resort to robocopy now. It tries to create the snapshots but most of the time just sits there at 0%. Oddly Linux build snapshots almost always worked.NewMelleWhat you wrote there seems pretty strange - snapshots are completely VM-independent (no matter what OS you use, you can create them even before installing the OS) and the acts of creating them or switching beetween them are instantaneous - should not take more than 1 second ever and never failed for me for years. Only deleting the snapshots can take time and (temporarily) disk space: if done from the middle of the snapshot tree, then VBox will have to merge the two snapshots (differential disk images to be exact) around the point of deletion.Also, I don't see any connection between VBox snapshots and 7Zip/robocopy, as snapshots are internal to VBox and does not require copying any files (for the user that is) - that's why I think we're talking about two completely different things. For context, the feature I'm talking about here and in my previous post is described in the manual here: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html#snapshotsThe only disadvantage of snapshots is that they tend to take a lot of disk space - but in this forum people tend to have huge disks anyway, me included :)Other than that - good luck! I also completely agree with the rainbow... thing you did there :). As of now, StreamFab works ok on my Win7 natively but who knows what happen next? Having future-proof options is always good.Also I don't know how would it be feasible performance-wise to replicate in VBox one trick in particular: having a lot of RAM, I have resorted to the creation of ramdisk (48GB seems enough) and forcing StreamFab to create most of its temporary files there, as sometimes it creates and then deletes thousands of tmp files per episode (especially for Disney+ and SkyShowtime) which can wear down the disks, especially SSD ones (along with my patience, as the whole OS performance tends to take a deep dive).

For one the Win11 disk is 60G. I left it for about 3 hours while I ran errands and it was still at 0%. Scoured the net and haven't found an answer yet. It's not a permissions issue. Until then robocopy. I have 10TB off to the side for storage items such as this.I'll be sure to move the SF Temp folders to an external drive. The system I have is old and only Win7 Home Premium so I'm limited to 16GB RAM. I've stripped everything out of it I could and the upgrade to Pro still always fails.

For one the Win11 disk is 60G. I left it for about 3 hours while I ran errands and it was still at 0%. Scoured the net and haven't found an answer yet. It's not a permissions issue. Until then robocopy. I have 10TB off to the side for storage items such as this.NewMelleI'd be glad to help you - but I'm really confused, as I still don't know what are you referring to exactly. What exactly was at 0%? What exactly are you copying with robocopy? What 'storage items' are you referring to? How it all relates to snapshots?If you're simply saying that taking a snapshot itself takes forever then there is definitely something seriously wrong with your setup - like I said they should not take any time at all to create, no matter how big the VM disks are.One small note, however: if you're taking a snapshot of a VM while it is running, it will create a file with a current live content of your VM's RAM (similar to hibernation, so you can go back to the VM up and running without the need of booting it up), so it may take a minute of your time - not more, though. Preferably, make sure to have your VM shut down before taking a snapshot.I'll be sure to move the SF Temp folders to an external drive. The system I have is old and only Win7 Home Premium so I'm limited to 16GB RAM. I've stripped everything out of it I could and the upgrade to Pro still always fails.NewMelleThat is definitely a good idea (second best after a ramdisk), also make sure that this external drive will be a fast one and preferably separate from the one you are downloading your movies/TV shows to via StreamFab.

Snapshot is not obvious in the main interface. It's buried just like simple Win10 settings. Click the sliders for the VM --> Snapshots --> RIGHT click the Current State --> Take, Everything is going Win10. Three dialogs deep just to change the screen saver. :rolleyes:Thanks to the last hung snapshot this is what I was presented with when I fired up VB again. Machine inaccessible.Machine UUID {8a98c12b-bebe-4758-8fb9-20783ba6d117} in 'X:\VirtualBox_VMs\Win11 Fresh\Win11 Fresh.vbox' doesn't match its UUID {65b6a911-d3cc-4605-8714-14c5544c09b2} in the registry file 'C:\Users\neal\.VirtualBox\VirtualBox.xml'.Robocopy saved my rear there. Renamed the broken VM and copied the backup over and bingo. Back to normal. Well, minus about an hour's work but I didn't lose it all. Creating a clone took about 3 times as long as robocopy as VB is using explorer and robocopy doesn't.I had done a clone of the machine AFTER I removed all the BS and Fugly but before I made a number of tweaks and fixes to the OS. I checked and indeed the UUIDs did not match. The UUID switched from the clone I created to the production VM. In other words the production VM had the clone's UUID. Same as the snapshot issue, Google is of zero help. I might have been able to fix it but it duplicated the UUID and I have no idea what the original UUID was.I will try snapshots one last time from the main VB interface and if it blows up again, never again. Had to fight with the audio again. That was one of the things I tweaked after I did a backup.I don't download hundreds of titles in a row. I space them out. That's how I got my Paramount+ account locked out. Unusual activity was what I was told.

Running StreamFab Inside Win7 Hosted VirtualBox

NewMelle

U doesnt need a ms account to use win11...
Brozilla

I am well aware of this. There is always a way around it and I've done it literally hundreds of times. It's still a PITA no matter how you look at it.

11 Pro allows you to connect to a domain instead of MS EZPZ. Just enter the workgroup name and password and you're done. Lower versions not so easy.

I went with 11 because MS has a nasty habit of decommissioning the older OS when a new one is rolled out. When 12 rolls out expect to see EOL announcements for 10 not long after.

NewMelle

I never see an ad on my phone. There again I'm old school. When I was young phones had a dial, you dialed 4 or 5 numbers to call someone and they didn't do text. All I use my phone for now is phone calls when I feel like it and the occasional one or two word text. That's it. I do take pics and video with it. But that's not google, and if they were interested in my pics and videos they must be really bored, nothing exciting there. I was incorrect, I do have one app on my phone and it blocks all calls not in my contact list and my contact list is very short.

Beyil

I understand Germany has officially banned M$ on government computers due to its "chatty" nature among other reasons, and one of my friends that works in a US healthcare organization said that his company has banned microsoft products from all of their computers for sending out patient info with out authorization and to entities unauthorized to receive such data...

NewMelle

Looks like that's primarily geared towards Office 365 but at least one German government agency is looking into Linux and other options due to 10's (and 11's) nosy nature. 365 runs in "the cloud." It's true a number of hospitals here will not use 365 as this stores client information in the cloud violating HIPAA. I know someone at two such hospitals. One uses self-hosted office and the other LibreOffice.

Enterprise versions of the OS do less "reporting" but they still send data unless IT disables it completely in the imaging process. A long time good friend and guy I mentored works in IT at US Air Force Bases and they do just that.

There is NO cloud. It's just someone else's computer(s) with the power to do with your data what they choose. In addition, you're not in charge of your data's security, they are. Some cloud based services even hold it hostage if you don't pay the subscription fees. I had to use Office 365 at work as does my wife now. I haven't used Office on my personal computer for over 30 years. First it was WPS Office until it became as bloated and issue prone as office, now I use LibreOffice.

I turn off ALL telemetry and error reporting, app usage data and the like. I'm not beta testing new versions of Windows any more so there is zero need to send this data to MS. I haven't been a part of the Insider program in a very long time.

I turned something off that makes accessing answers-dot-micosoft-dot-com impossible. The connections fail. I'm utterly heartbroken. Really. :rolleyes: All the answers you find there are elsewhere and the answers there are most definitely filtered and censored. They can't very well allow users to post methods such as how to circumvent MS espionage and data collection or get around requirements such as TPM 2.0. I find far more useful answers on Stack Exchange, Windows Club, Windows 10 and 11 forum and SuperUser for example.

The only "cloud" based service I use is Google Drive and that's for sharing files with others, files I choose. I have an open source program for just about anything I'd do in the "cloud."

« Previous Page