VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY error

[spiffikins]

Hi all -

I am trying to set up a guest 32bit WinXP vm using virtualbox, on my 64bit Vista Home laptop. Everything seemed to be going well - I set up the VM, installed XP and was running it last night without issues. Then I rebooted my machine and logged in this morning, and now when I try to start the winXp guest system, I get the following error:

Failed to start the virtual machine xp

failed to open image 'C:\Program Files\Sun\XVM VirtualBox\images\xp32.vdi' for writing due to wrong permissions (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY).

Failed to attach driver below us! Image is read-only.
(VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY).

PIIX3 cannot attach drive to the Primary Master
(VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY).

Unknown error createing VM (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY).

Details:
Result code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: console
Interface: Iconsole (huge string of numbers/letters)

I am running Virtualbox 2.2.2 and this happened once last night, but I had de-installed and reinstalled virtualbox, so figured it was something I had done - so I rebuilt the virtual machine. This time, I didn't do anything except shut down the machine and restart it a few times.

I did check the obvious - the .vdi file is *not* read only. I've tried starting up virtual box as myself and as administrator, but starting as administrator gives a bunch of other errors - and I installed it as myself.

I tried googling for this error message but only get changesets - nothing to indicate what I should be doing to fix it

any help would be greatly appreciated!

[vbox4me2]

Did you install vbox as administrator? this is a must even if your own account is admin equal.

[spiffikins]

thanks for that idea - I had not explicitly installed as administrator. I uninstalled virtualbox and reinstalled it - and the guest xp host now starts up.

I'm not sure why it would have started up before? I guess I'll be skeptical that this fully solves my problem until I've had a couple of cycles of rebooting and having the vm start up

[spiffikins]

Unfortunately, that didn't work.

I uninstalled virtualbox last night, reinstalled it as the administrator, and all was happy.

I shut everything down, and today after restarting, I tried starting up the guest host in virtualbox and got the same error.

I cannot seem to get the installation to function past a reboot/shutdown cycle - each time I want to use it, I need to uninstall and reinstall virtualbox - the .vdi continues to work - but the program itself needs to be reinstalled daily to get past this error.

[vbox4me2]

Reinstall VBox again and select repair, if that doesn't do it their must be some sort of policy reverting installations.

[mshahid]

I encountered the same error. My VirtualBox was locked and I had to forcefully terminate the process. After that when I restarted my virtualbox and started getting this same error. I believed that some kind of "status flag" was not reset and VDI was in readonly mode. I am unable to find any way to clear that "flag." I used VBoxManage to create a clone of my hd in VHD format. I wanted to make sure the new image doesn't inherit any VDI header that's why I changed the output format.

VBoxManage clonevdi \VirtualBox\Ubuntu\ubuntu.vdi --format VHD \VirtualBox\Ubuntu\ubu.vhd

I mounted this new image to my virtual machine and voila! It worked perfectly.

I may create another clone from this VHD back to VDI format and I'm sure that would work as well.

Shahid

[steodatus]

had the same problem on vista 64 business. if you start virtualbox as administrator, it goes away. right-click the virtualbox icon (i do it from the quicklaunch toolbar) and choose "run as administrator".

[TerryE]

My only Q is why you are creating your images in a subdirectory to C:\Program Files\Sun\XVM VirtualBox\? User data does not belong under C:\Program Files\ and this highly deprecated. I would suspect that normal user accounts no longer have write access to this hierarchy.

[serg36]

You simply need to detach disk in Disk Management.

[paulellis]

Unfortunately, that didn't work.

I uninstalled virtualbox last night, reinstalled it as the administrator, and all was happy.

I shut everything down, and today after restarting, I tried starting up the guest host in virtualbox and got the same error.

I cannot seem to get the installation to function past a reboot/shutdown cycle - each time I want to use it, I need to uninstall and reinstall virtualbox - the .vdi continues to work - but the program itself needs to be reinstalled daily to get past this error.

I think you need to run as administrator rather than just install as admin. It works the first time after install because you had 'Run after install' checked and you were still admin when it started up. Right-click on the desktop/start menu icon and select 'Run as Adminstrator'.

Paul

[cstehno]

I had the same issue while using Windows 7. It turned out to be a permissions issue for the VDI file. Gave localhost\Users full access to the file in the Security settings and that did the trick.

[amagard]

I had the same problem ( trying to install a WIN 95 guest on a WIN VISTA host ). It turned out that the read attribute had been set for my floppy images ( not sure when and how ). After turning it off problem was fixed.

Regards .... Axel

[Donsaka]

Serg36! You sir are a genius! Why they don't tell us that when we are setting it up as newbs the first time I'd sure like to know. That and only that killed the error and made it work. Thanks. I really appreciate it. With this working I wont have to dual boot to XP just to get my email. Meh
You are a lifesaver!!!!!

[mpack]

Most of the above thread is obsolete. Be warned that VirtualBox v4 equivalents use different commands, and the folder structure has totally changed.

Locking this.