Raw disk booting of Windows 10 broken with Ubuntu artful

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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Ramon Casero
Posts: 1
Joined: 16. Dec 2017, 20:07

Raw disk booting of Windows 10 broken with Ubuntu artful

Post by Ramon Casero »

Summary: I had Windows 10 (guest) booting as a raw disk from Ubuntu 17.04 (host). With the upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 (artful), VirtualBox goes to grub2, instead of booting Windows 10.

More detail: I have the following partitions:
gparted.png
gparted.png (88.29 KiB) Viewed 6969 times
The machine is a Dell XPS 15. Windows lives in /dev/nvme0n1p3, and Ubuntu in /dev/nvme0n1p7. From linux, I create a raw disk

Code: Select all

sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/VirtualBox_VMs/win10pro.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/nvme0n1 -partitions 1,2,3,4,5,6
This creates files ~/VirtualBox_VMs/win10pro.vmdk and VirtualBox_VMs/win10pro-pt.vmdk.

I change the owner of the files to my regular user, so that VirtualBox can access them

Code: Select all

sudo chown $USER:$USER VirtualBox_VMs/win10pro*
To create the VM:
  1. I launch VirtualBox 5.1.30_Ubuntu r118389
  2. Create a new VM named "Windows_10_Pro"
  3. Increase RAM to 8192 MB
  4. "Use an existing virtual hard disk file" -> ~/VirtualBox_VMs/win10pro.vmdk
In the new VM Settings, I make the following changes
  1. System -> Enable EFI (special OSes only)
  2. Display -> Enable 3D Acceleration
  3. Display -> Enable 2D Acceleration
  4. Display -> Video Memory = 256 MB
  5. Storage -> win10pro.vmdk -> Solid-state Drive
When I click "Start" for the VM, however, it goes to a "GNU GRUB" screen:
grub.png
grub.png (27.34 KiB) Viewed 6969 times
This was working before upgrading to Ubuntu artful. "Start" would just launch Windows 10. When I saw that it had stopped working, I deleted the VM, created a new one with the steps above, but I still get the GNU GRUB screen.

Although Windows 10 doesn't boot from VirtualBox anymore, I can launch it from the initial dual boot menu when I switch the laptop on. So Windows 10 hasn't broken, and works as before.

Any ideas?
jkane13
Posts: 31
Joined: 1. Nov 2008, 04:31

Re: Raw disk booting of Windows 10 broken with Ubuntu artful

Post by jkane13 »

I am not being very helpful ... I had all kinds of problems trying to get EFI to work on even 17.04 with raw partitions. I went back to regular BIOS and using grub. My upgrade to 17.10 has the host went pretty smoothly. Needed a couple extra reboots to clean things up, but has been working pretty good. On the windows as a guest side anyhow.

I have separate SSD drives fully partitioned to each OS. Not trying to share one drive partitioned.

I guess I am just saying that maybe EFI isn't as ready for prime time as it should be by now!
cmcinroy
Posts: 1
Joined: 28. Jan 2018, 13:26

Re: Raw disk booting of Windows 10 broken with Ubuntu artful

Post by cmcinroy »

Ramon, I have the same problem... likely because I followed your excellent guide on github (thank you) to get the VM working originally. I see your notes there regarding woes associated with the 17.10 upgrade. I can echo those, having experienced the same problems... including your post here. In fact, google led me here when searching for a solution. I will continue to seek a solution. Thanks for your efforts, they have been very helpful to me.

EDIT: FYI, I also updated to the latest version of VirtualBox (5.2.6r120293), but still see the same result.
nherb
Posts: 1
Joined: 13. Jul 2018, 16:10

Re: Raw disk booting of Windows 10 broken with Ubuntu artful

Post by nherb »

You can enter this in GRUB to Start Windows 10.

insmod chain
set root=(hd0,gpt1)
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
boot

found at
stackoverflow (dot) com/questions/51101487/booting-raw-disk-windows-10-vm-in-virtualbox-boots-to-grub-shell

dunno how to automate :-D
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