Help Recovering Windows VM on OS X in VirtualBox

[astro1986]

Hello,

I would appreciate some help using VirtualBox to access memory from my Hyper-V virtual machine that I was running on Windows. The VM was running Ubuntu. I damaged my laptop, and my replacement machine is a Mac. I need to recover the files from the VM using this Mac. I am using VirtualBox Version 5.1.18.

The files from Windows are .vhdx and .avhdx files. The .avhdx files seem to be snapshot files. There are two .vhdx files and two .avhdx files.

I managed to access the .vhdx files through a Ubuntu VirtualBox machine by first converting them to .vdi files using VBoxManage, according to a post I found online. However, I cannot figure out how to access the .avhdx files. I tried to convert them to VDI files, according to the same line of code I used for the .vhdx files:

VBoxManage clonehd --format VDI input.avhdx output.vdi

But I received the following error:

VBoxManage: error: Could not open the medium '/path/input.avhdx'.
VBoxManage: error: VHDX: Image '/path/input.avhdx' has a non empty log which is not supported (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
VBoxManage: error: VD: error VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED opening image file '/path/input.avhdx' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component MediumWrap, interface IMedium, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "OpenMedium(Bstr(pszFilenameOrUuid).raw(), enmDevType, enmAccessMode, fForceNewUuidOnOpen, pMedium.asOutParam())" at line 179 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp

Does anyone know a way to access these .avhdx files in VirtualBox?

I see that there is a "snapshots" area in VirtualBox, but the "restore selected snapsnot" option is greyed out. Furthermore, I imagine I would still have issues concerning the file format.

Thank you in advance!

[socratis]

Does anyone know a way to access these .avhdx files in VirtualBox?

This is not something that you would deal with in VirtualBox. As the error indicates, the format is not supported by VirtualBox, you've got to treat it outside of VirtualBox.

From a quick search:

• https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/ ... vhdx-avhdx
• https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Fo ... rverhyperv
• http://blog.workinghardinit.work/2014/0 ... eckpoints/

There's plenty more where that came from...

Moving to "Using VirtualBox" from "OSX Hosts", since this question is not host-specific.

[BillG]

I agree. It would be bad enough if it was a VirtualBox snapshot, but it is a Hyper-V checkpoint. Same basic idea but very different mechanisms.

[astro1986]

Yes, but I cannot use Hyper-V in OS X. The Google searches I have done seem to suggest that the newest versions of VirtualBox should support vhd formatting...

[erdeslawe]

But VHD isn't VHDX and it's VHDX that VirtualBox doesn't support. You would have to find a way of successfully converting the VHDX formatted 'machine' to a VHD formatted 'machine' to have any hope.

You really need to use Windows Forums to get help with this, but here's one link to get you started: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cbe ... ows-azure/ - but note the warning about differencing disks.

[socratis]

Although a noble thought, the OP has a Mac and those solutions won't help the particularly. Unless they perform the whole procedure inside a VM. But since it's been 2 months, I think that they may have found a solution already.