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NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 31. Jan 2010, 15:09
by mattin
Hi
I use VB for months without problems on my laptop Samsung R560 (Core 2 Duo P8400, 4 GB RAM, orginal Vista HP 32bit as host OS. I tried as guests: XP PRo 32bit and Win2k3 Server EE - both works flawless. I have these guests OSses as .ISO files ( burned on CD) and .VHD - downloaded from Microsoft site. Recently I decided to give a try to Win2k8 Server EE 32bit. I downloaded this stuff from MS sitehttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb738372.aspx, extracted and - as always - use existing hard disk option in wizard.When I start get FATAL: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED.
A lot of us use here .ISO files to install OSses but I have no .ISO with W2k8 EE , only this .VHD.
I have VirtualBox 3.1.2 r56127

In readme file stands: System Requirements

* Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is required to use this virtual machine

So VB cant use this image ? how can I use it ?

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 31. Jan 2010, 16:46
by Perryg
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is required to use this virtual machine
This pretty much says it all.
VirtualBox will and can use the VHD format natively but images created specific for Hyper-V and only to be run on Microsoft products are not going to work. You might get it to start to boot, but once the image sees that the hardware has changed it will require activation and you will not have a key.

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 1. Feb 2010, 01:48
by MarkCranness
You might try to make the VHD bootable, as it may be missing a MBR or VBR.

Somebody earlier had a similar problem, and I looked for some solutions. None of these were tried at the time, so I don't know if they work, but if you are curious, you might try them... (with no guarantee of success)

UBCD for Windows has various boot repair tools which may help (rebuild MBR, fix VBR BIOS Parameter Block etc.)

There are MS tools that might (or not) make a VHD bootable.
Try something like this, which might repair the MBR boot code:

Code: Select all

VHDMount /m /f D:\<VHDFile> m:
bootsect /nt60 m: /mbr
If that doesn't entirely work, then try this, which might repair the VBR boot code:

Code: Select all

VHDMount /m /f D:\<VHDFile> m:
bootsect /nt60 m:
Mounting virtual hard disks at the command line
Bootsect Command-Line Options
Windows XP/Vista: How to Attach a VHD File (how to install the VHDMount program)

As PerryG says, likely Win2K8 will complain about activation. Perhaps using the VMLite XP Mode Plugin for VirtualBox might help with that.

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 6. Feb 2010, 05:48
by servosa
Being a student I have a simular problem with Server 2008 and if you click on image file it will bring up Virtual Box and message says Failed to open and DOS screen comes up when trying to boot says. Fatal could not read from the boot medium! System halted.
Also when using VBox and trying to boot Server 2008 error message comes up with verr-not_supported.

Result Code:
VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component:
Medium
Interface:
IMedium {aa8167ba-df72-4738-b740-9b84377ba9f1}
Callee:
IVirtualBox {2158464a-f706-414b-a8c4-fb589dfc6b62}
I had no trouble using linux mint or Ubuntu or even server 2003 so what can be done to solve booting problem.?
I had a look at M Soft website in previous posting by someone but seemed to keep getting redirected.
Is there a simple way to get server 2008 working with virtual box.?
Using the Server 2008 disc it will boot ok by itself. Note this is not a Image disc but same as Server 2008 disc.
P.S Saw prevoius post and wondered if anything in previous post work.?
P.S im using Virtual box version 3.1.2r56127 so may have version listed wrong on side.

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 7. Feb 2010, 16:33
by mattin
thanks for replies guys, I haven't tested workarounds mentioned here - not yet. Now I'll try start this stuff on Virtual PC 2007 on my host laptop - I'll write here results.

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 14. Mar 2010, 20:24
by EarthQ
Converting the VHD to VHD using StarWind Converter (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/downloa ... verter.exe) does work for me.

HTH.

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 15. Mar 2010, 04:42
by servosa
I found in the end to avoid doing all that as had Server 2003 installed. Using Virtual Box Just log into Server 2003 then click on the DVD disk which had my image of Server 2008 and install from there and installs over top of Server 2003. Seems a long way to go but works fine.
But will look at the conveter mentioned . (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/downloa ... verter.exe) Thanks for the Info

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 7. Apr 2010, 23:05
by greyseal96
For what it's worth, I had a similar problem when I was doing P2V experiments with some of my servers. One of the things that I tried was taking the VPC between VirtualPC and VirtualBox. This was a few version back and I was never able to get the vhd to work with VirtualBox. I always had to convert to a VMDK or VDI first. However, I've seen that now VirtualBox has fixed an issue with using Hyper-V vhd files so that might not be the case anymore. Apart from that, I had to do make sure that the HAL was correct, the proper IDE drivers were installed, and that the virtual IDE adapter was using PIIX3. Once I made sure that those 3 things were taken care of, I didn't get the "No Bootable Medium..." errors. Hyper-V might be different, though. I just thought that I'd share in case it helps.

Regards,
John

Re: NO BOOTABLE MEDIUM FOUND! SYSTEM HALTED

Posted: 8. Apr 2010, 05:24
by servosa
Thanks for info John.
I will try it again sometime and see if it will boot directly or not. Maybe the issue has been fixed as you said.