No bootable medium found..

[JonM]

Hello all,
I am somewhat new at using VirtualBox so I assume that I am missing something simple.

I have a generalized Windows 8.1 Embedded image (WIM file) that I am trying to create a VM for. This image can successfully be applied to actual hardware.
To create the VM I am launching VirtualBox and specifying that it boot from the Optical Drive that I have specified the Windows PE ISO that it used to image the actual hardware.
VirtualBox starts up WindowsPE and I am able to apply the WIM image and create a VHD.
Once DISM has completed I unmount the WinPE image and restart the VM.
After the "VirtualBox BIOS" screen I am presented with the error message "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted."

See the attached logs: [ModEdit; corrupted ZIP file removed, see next post]

My question is, what am I missing?

Below are the commands that are issued in WinPE:

Code: Select all

diskpart /s diskprep.txt
dism /apply-image /imagefile:filename.wim /index:1 /applydir:w:\
bcdboot w:\windows /l en-US /s s: /f ALL

contents of diskprep.txt:

Code: Select all

select disk 0
clean
convert gpt
create partition primary size=300
format quick fs=ntfs label="Recovery"
create partition efi size=100
format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
assign letter="S"
create partition msr size=128
create partition primary size=12288
format quick fs=ntfs label="Page"
assign letter="P"
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows"
assign letter="W"

[JonM]

Logs.zip

Log files

(50.15 KiB) Downloaded 30 times

added log files...

[BillG]

No bootable medium found means just what it says. VirtualBox cannot find anything to boot from. Either the .vhd is not bootable or VirtualBox cannot read from the device.

How big is the .vhd file? Does it look big enough to contain an OS ?

[mpack]

I seem to be seeing mention of GPT partitioning. Perhaps that will turn out to be the source of the problem.

VirtualBox doesn't support GPT partitioning unless you enable the EFI BIOS option, and note that it may still not work.

Note that the Oracle VM VirtualBox EFI support is experimental and will be enhanced as
EFI matures and becomes more widespread. Mac OS X, Linux, and newer Windows guests are
known to work fine. Windows 7 guests are unable to boot with the Oracle VM VirtualBox EFI
implementation.

Otherwise: a P2V of a Windows image is not a trivial task. Especially a non-standard Windows install such as "Windows Embedded".

[JonM]

Thank you for the replies.

Yes, the VHD file has the OS files, I am able to mount it in Windows 10 and view all of the expected files.

As for the GPT partitions, that may be the issue. I have tried EFI bios without any luck. When I get back in the office I'll attempt to format the VHD using MBR.

Thank you for your replies and advice.