Maxsea Time Zero and Oracle VirtualBox

[Biggles]

Having upgraded my yacht's laptop to a Dell XPS 13, I am having to use a virtual Windows 7 machine to run Maxsea TZ as you cannot install a dual boot Win 7 as the XPS has no USB backwards compatibility and Win7 does not recognise USB 3. There is a workaround by Dell but as I have changed the SSD from 256GB Samsung to a 1TB Toshiba XG3, it does not work due to a lack of drivers.

I successfully created a virtual Win 7 64bit machine using VMWare and TZ ran OK. However VMWare took up far too much processor and everything ran too slowly.

I switched to Oracle VirtualBox which runs beautifully. However although TZ installs perfectly, a few seconds after starting the program an error message appears saying that 'The program ran into a problem and has been stopped'. No other software was in use at the time. There are serial ports in the virtual machine.

I am completely baffled as to why TZ ran under VMWare and does not under VirtualBox. Has anyone had the same experience, or has a suggestion on how to fix this problem?

[Kenomac]

I had lots of trouble trying to run Nobeltec Odyssey which is the American version of TimeZero until I upgraded the laptop to the exact Maxsea specufications. Basically, I needed to buy the laptop specific to run the program, it's very particular about the drivers.

Call the manufacturer of the software to get your answer. Now everything runs fine.

[ccannan]

I know you said it can't be done, but I'm pretty sure you can create a dual boot Windows 10/Windows 7. You can make Windows 7 recognize USB 3.0, and it also looks like you can download a driver to allow Windows 7 run the 1 TB Toshiba XG3.

Having a dual boot system would be preferable, I would think.

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

I had lots of trouble trying to run Nobeltec Odyssey which is the American version of TimeZero until I upgraded the laptop to the exact Maxsea specufications. Basically, I needed to buy the laptop specific to run the program, it's very particular about the drivers.

Call the manufacturer of the software to get your answer. Now everything runs fine.

Thanks for your input. In the end I gave up and went back to VMWare. After playing with the core and processor values I now have acceptable performance and now run my nav programs OK in my Virtual Win 7 machine. I have always found Maxsea products to be finicky unlike OpenCPN which installs and runs without any problems. Cheers

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by ccannan

I know you said it can't be done, but I'm pretty sure you can create a dual boot Windows 10/Windows 7. You can make Windows 7 recognize USB 3.0, and it also looks like you can download a driver to allow Windows 7 run the 1 TB Toshiba XG3.

Having a dual boot system would be preferable, I would think.

I used to think a dual boot was best, but now I have VMWare running well I am not so sure. The big advantage of running a VM is that you can switch between OS's with a single keystroke whereas a dual boot machine requires a full reboot, and we all know how long that can sometimes take. A VM is more difficult to set up, but if the memory, cores and processor values are experimented with you can get pretty acceptable performance on a good machine such as the XPS 13.

I spent weeks trying to inject USB 3.0 drivers into my WIN 7 iso but was unable to install Win 7 on the Dell XPS 13. It is a pity that Dell did not build in backwards compatibility to their USB ports. Had they done so, Win 7 would have installed easily. Maybe there are newer drivers now, but I am happy with the VM set up. Technology moves on, and so must we. Cheers

[Pelagic]

Excuse my ignorance as I am about to buy MaxSea to run on PC and FURUNO Touch 2....
but would it work on Win 10?

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Excuse my ignorance as I am about to buy MaxSea to run on PC and FURUNO Touch 2....
but would it work on Win 10?

It would be best to call Maxsea or Nobeltec prior to purchase to see if your machine will run their program. Yes, ours works fine with Windows 10, actually better.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Excuse my ignorance as I am about to buy MaxSea to run on PC and FURUNO Touch 2....
but would it work on Win 10?

We run MaxSea Time Zero on two Win 7 machines. I'm told everything that will run on Win 7 will also run on Win 10... but we haven't had need to test that... so haven't actually tried MX TZ on our Win 10 platform.

We've always gotten very good customer service response from MaxSea/France, when we've had questions.

-Chris

[W32PAMELA]

I use a patcher provided by Asrock. Go to ASRock-Installing Windows 7 on Intel Braswell and Skylake Platforms to find instructions and download link on making a usb memory stick or ISO image of windows 7 with the added USB 3.0 drivers.

At the URL choose either of the Platforms and chose the install method using a USB drive and any kind of mouse or keyboard. This will get you to "Solution C" with instructions and the patcher download link.

The website instructions 1 & 2 deal with putting a windows 7 ISO or install disk on the computer and downloading and starting the patcher program.

Step 3 is where you begin to use the patcher program but you will see that the first window that comes up shows step 1 of 4. This can be confusing if you try to relate step 1 in the program with step 1 on the website instructions.

Start the patcher program and follow these steps for installing a patched windows program on a USB stick using a windows 7 installation disc as the source of the original files.

1. Tell the program that you will use a USB drive to install the patched version of windows 7 on your computer.
2. Tell the program the location of the original unpatched installation files. I use a Windows 7 installation disc.
3. Tell the program the location of the USB drive that will be used for the installation of the patched Windows 7 installation.
4. Click "Start" and wait until the program is finished.

Different choices in steps 1-3 would let you write an ISO image to be burned to a disc or USB stick later.

Adding the Intel USB 3.0 drivers to a Windows 7 disc is only required if you are installing Windows 7 on one of the latest generation Intel motherboards.

[Littlechay]

I always ran MaxSea Timezero on Windows 7. Now I run it on windows 10. I have a nettop built in to the nav station and run a Dell XPS 15 as backup. No problems on either installation and no problems with USB 3 on Windows 7 either. I'm not sure where that rumour comes from, was it specific to the drivers for your hardware?

These days I am running TZ Navigator v3 on both machines on Windows 10 without any problems. Interfaces on USB 2 and 3; NMEA 0183 and N2K data via an Actisense interface.

[Jdege]

Originally Posted by Biggles

I used to think a dual boot was best, but now I have VMWare running well I am not so sure. The big advantage of running a VM is that you can switch between OS's with a single keystroke whereas a dual boot machine requires a full reboot, and we all know how long that can sometimes take. A VM is more difficult to set up, but if the memory, cores and processor values are experimented with you can get pretty acceptable performance on a good machine such as the XPS 13.

For me, the main advantage is backups. Doing a backup just means sitting down the guest OS, copying the VHD, then restarting the guest OS. A restore then means just copying the VHD back. And if ii's the hardware that's dead, I just need a new Vmware host. No driver problems getting things running on new hardware.

(There are ways of doing backups that don't require a shutdown of the guest, but I've never bothered to figure them out. Running a script to shutdown, backup, and restart every morning at 3:00 is simple enough.)

[W32PAMELA]

Originally Posted by Littlechay

I always ran MaxSea Timezero on Windows 7. Now I run it on windows 10. I have a nettop built in to the nav station and run a Dell XPS 15 as backup. No problems on either installation and no problems with USB 3 on Windows 7 either. I'm not sure where that rumour comes from, was it specific to the drivers for your hardware?

It is not a rumor. Windows 7 does not have USB drivers included on the install disc that will work with the latest intel chipsets in the 100 series. To do an install of windows 7 on one of these new boards while using a USB optical disc or usb mouse it is necessary to add the new USB3.0 drivers to the other drivers included on the windows 7 disc otherwise your USB devices will not function once the install starts.

[Littlechay]

Originally Posted by W32PAMELA

It is not a rumor. Windows 7 does not have USB drivers included on the install disc that will work with the latest intel chipsets in the 100 series. To do an install of windows 7 on one of these new boards while using a USB optical disc or usb mouse it is necessary to add the new USB3.0 drivers to the other drivers included on the windows 7 disc otherwise your USB devices will not function once the install starts.

Fair enough.. misunderstood the OPs question. Guess their hardware is post Windows 7? Or is Biggles running some other OS? Is that the reason for running W7 as a guest OS?

I run W10 on everything now and have had no issues so far. Run Debian as guest OS for Rpi dev and tinkering.

[Biggles]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Excuse my ignorance as I am about to buy MaxSea to run on PC and FURUNO Touch 2....
but would it work on Win 10?

From all the replies (received with thanks) it seems that TZ does install on Win 10. When I last tried it, the installation failed because Win10 would not accept SQL Server R2. It was needing a later version. Installing the latest version from MS did not help as the TZ installer would not proceed without R2 being installed first.

So based upon the replies I tried to give it another go. The installation ran perfectly, so I guess MS has done something in the later versions of Win10 to make SQL R2 install?

I am still sticking with my VM Win 7 for the moment. At least it keeps the navigation side separate from on shore stuff and I like the one click switch from Win7 to Win 10 with no delay. Thanks Bob for the USB 3.0 guide. I have been through all that but it did not work with my particular hardware setup. Maybe if I had not swapped my Samsung 256GB SSD for a Toshiba 1TB SSD it might have. On a rainy day I will give it another go.

[ranger58sb]

Now you mention is, I remember there was some kind of SQL incompatibility when I was moving MX TZ from an earlier XPS system to one of our more current Win 7 platforms. MaxSea/France sent me (told me?) the fix, with decent instructions, EZ.

-Chris