Snapshot issue - can only access the last one.

[Alchad]

I've been playing around with various setting of my Virtual XP and have saved several snapshots as I went along, hoping to be able to revert to an earlier snapshot if I messed something up. Unfortunately I can't start any except the most recent one - see below, when I select snapshot 1 the " Start" option is greyed out, as are snapshots 2 and 3, I can only start the latest - snapshot 4.

Is this normal, or can I access the others?

Alchad

Screenshot 2023-01-02 161001.png (54.5 KiB) Viewed 3274 times

[scottgus1]

To start an earlier snapshot, you have to select it then click "Restore" This will move the "Current State" to that chosen snapshot. Then you can start the VM.

Note that the snapshot that had the previous "Current State" will need a new snapshot to preserve the contents of the previous "Current State". If you don't make this new snapshot the previous Current State will be irretrievably lost.

Also note that since all your snapshots are of a running VM (showing the green triangle), they will all include a saved state, therefore they may be unusable if you change the Virtualbox version. This snapshot chain may probably get you to an unusable VM one day soon. A better method of preserving restorable VM states is to copy the VM's folder to backup media when the VM has been fully shut down. If you want to keep using snapshots, don't store important data inside the VM. Also, a snapshot while the VM is shut down completely (showing a red/orange square) can make it through a Virtualbox version change.

[Alchad]

Thanks,

Struggling a bit here.

First question, is there a correct way to shut down the Virtual XP - I seem to have 3 options

save the machine state
send the shutdown signal
power down the machine state

Can't really see much difference, although there must be, but which one should I use.

My ultimate purpose is to get round the activation countdown on Windows XP which is counting down from 30 days since I installed it. A Google article I found suggested saving a snapshot so if I came back in say 60 days the program would still run. I DO NOT want to use this as a way around the activation, I would gladly buy XP if I could, but that just doesn't seem an option - please enlighten me if there is a way I can.

Thanks again

Alan C

[mpack]

"Send the shutdown signal" is the only one that performs a graceful shutdown of the guest OS.

"Save the machine state" does exactly that. It doesn't shut down the machine at all.

"Power down the machine" again does exactly that, i.e. it cuts the power immediately. Only to be used as a last resort in a non-responsive VM.

Frankly, if your time is worth anything at all to you then buying a genuine XP Pro license on eBay will be cheaper than all this shenanigans. Avoid Dell and HP, and make sure it's a full installer and not an upgrade, rescue or service pack CD.