Banning a XP installation into Virtualbox

At work there is no way to avoid windows but I still prefer to do development in linux. So what I want is to convert my existing windows into a virtualbox environment.

So that is what I have done:

1) Use the free VMWare converter to make a logical vmware image of your windows partition. However the converter had some problems so I used the installed Acronis backup software to make a logical copy in a tib archive and used that as input for the converter.

2) The vmware image should start fine using virtualbox. But I still had serious problems with the performance. CPU went to 100% and the image wasn't usable at all. Gladly I stumbled across this site: http://blog.subaquatic.net/archives/virtualbox-p2v-success/

The solution is to choose a simple ACPI PC in the DeviceManager->Computer setting.

However I haven't switched of the IO/APIC setting again.

That solves the performance problem an I am a happy linux with windows in a box user again ;-)