Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Installing Jaws on Windows 7 in Virtualbox on OSx

After trying to get a VMWare Fusion license inside IBM without much luck, I took the advice of Scott Strubberg from IBM Design and installed, quite painlessly, Oracle's Virtualbox product. I didn't have any trouble with the product and after requesting an existing Windows 7 Professional license I was able to get on the internet on Windows inside OSx Mavericks and install JAWS.

Here are the steps:

  1. Request a Windows 7 License. Do this first since it will take a couple of days to get approved. Link to SWG software license management. You may need to purchase a license if not available but I've heard that there are quite a few in that pool. My request was approved in about 24 hours.
  2. Download Virtualbox from Oracle's website.
  3. Download the Windows 7 Professional ISO 
  4. Install Virtualbox and follow the next few steps:
    1. Open Virtual Box.
    2. Click 'New'.
    3. Put 'Windows 7' or your own name in the name field and change the Operation System Version to 'Windows 7 64-bit" or the appropriate version if you're using 32-bit for some reason.
    4. Set the RAM to anywhere between 1024MB and 4096MB, up to about 1/2 of the available max. If you're not sure, 1.5 GB may be a good choice. Click Continue
    5. Select 'Create a virtual hard drive now'. Click Continue
    6. Select VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image). Click Continue
    7. Select 'Dynamically Allocated'. Click Continue
    8. The name can be left the same. 15 GB may be enough for use of one program and some files, but this choice is up to you.
    9. Click 'Create'
    10. Click on 'Settings' and select the 'Storage' tab.
    11. Under 'IDE Controller', click on Empty. Then on the right-side column, click on the CD icon to the right of 'CD/DVD Drive' and select 'Choose a Virtual CD/DVD File'.
    12. In the Popup WIndow, find the Windows 7 .iso file you saved earlier and double-click it.
    13. Click OK to close the Settings Window.
  5. Click 'Start' and a black box will pop up. Follow its instructions to install Windows 7. You'll need your valid serial number for this step.
  6. At this point you will need to change your network settings on this virtual machine.
    1. Go to Settings for the Windows 7 virtual machine.
    2. Click on network.
    3. For Adapter 1:
      1. Check yes for Enable Network Adapter.
      2. Select NAT in the Attached to: select box. [screenshot]
    4. For Adapter 2:
      1. Check yes for Enable Network Adapter.
      2. Select Bridged Adapter in the Attached to: select box.
  7. If you are still not able to pass the internet into your virtual machine, you'll need to seek additional help (and please report it back here). This step worked for me on Maverick's.
  8. Download new browsers from their respective sites as needed.
  9. Download and install Jaws from the license server.

I had to do some hunting to find this information so hopefully this post will bring it to one spot. If you find any steps that do not work or have any shortcuts to this, please let me know.

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