Nothing but a blank "Windows" screen

I am not having any luck trying to install the Win 8 Release Preview (64-bit) on Virtualbox. After creating the machine, etc., I power it up and it just sits there with a black screen that says "Windows" on it, and nothing else. The tutorials I've seen online don't seem to indicate that I need to change any of the settings after the machine is created (other than to attach the .iso obviously), so I'm not sure what the issue is. I've attached the log from Virtualbox and would appreciate any help you can offer.

i experienced that from the disc i burnt for dual boot, i reinstalled again and waited longer and it eventually worked,
it runs fine now, and im not totally against it but im not going to upgrade from 7 in a hurry,win 7 meets my needs for now.

Ok. I'll try it again when I get a chance and leave it sitting for a while to see if it ever decides to do something. I haven't really played much with Win 8 at this point but I'm definitely not impressed with the Metro UI.

I have been using Virtual Box up to latest version 4.1.16 on XP for a long time and all 3 versions of Windows 8 separately with no problem.
You should have 256MB Video display and 2048 MB System memory
Have you loaded the Extension pack ?
Please advise your Virtual box settings for General /system /display etc
Also if you have 2 screens on dual display ,try to turn one off or default to main screen only.

Trying again to see if I can make it work this time.

Laptop has 4GB of RAM and 256MB of dedicated graphics memory. Currently running Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit with appropriate processor virtualization enabled (I've got several 64-bit Linux VMs on my external hard drive as well and they work fine).

Initial VM settings were 1932MB of RAM and 128MB of graphics memory. I fired it up and let it sit for 15-20 minutes, but never got past the initial "Windows" screen.

Powered off the VM and changed the settings to 2048MB of RAM and 256MB of graphics memory. Fired it up, let it sit for another 15 minutes or so, and still no changes.

Virtualbox logs continue to show no activity beyond 15 seconds from the time I powered it on.

One final update on this. I finally figured out the trick to making it work...

When VirtualBox boots up, I have to hit F12 and change the boot device from "IDE Master" to "Cd-rom". I'm not sure why that works, but it does.

When VirtualBox boots up, I have to hit F12 and change the boot device from "IDE Master" to "Cd-rom". I'm not sure why that works, but it does.

Click to expand...

Because the first boot device is the HDD and not the CD/DVD.

Weird. All new VM's start with the CD.

I have a Acer Aspire with exactly the same specs and all goes well.
Tips:
- You can get a newer version VBox 4.1.18 (if not already installed)
- VBox uses openGL, update your graphics drivers (if possible).
- You can install Win8 with only 1GB given to the VM and it still works (only if Win7 runs short on RAM)

Further update... I thought that fixed the problem, but it seems to have been random luck.

Once I get it to boot from the CD and enter all the info, the installer wants to restart, and as soon as that happens, it sits there on a blank "Windows" screen again and the installer never continues. If I reset the VM enough times it will eventually boot again but the installer doesn't remember where it was.

I've given up on Virtualbox for now and am now trying VMWare Player.