MS-DOS not start

[Twin]

Hello,

I have a system .image a functional MS-DOS but after it turned into VDi not boot, I have a message "Missing operating system" while I boot well on the virtual hard disk.
I transformed in my .img .vdi with VBoxManage.
There is a special parameter setting?

Thanks for your help
Twin

[mpack]

Lots of possibilities, but best guess: you have an image of a DOS partition, not an image of a disk. An expert could mock up a complete disk image using a VMDK descriptor and a copied MBR. If you need to ask for details then this solution probably isn't for you.

[Twin]

Hello

Data were collected by a specialized company (because the hard drive is out of order) that is had who provided the .img.
I think he has a problem so I am left with the departure data "raw"
I create an iso with the following files and converted into .vdi

Capture.JPG (38.58 KiB) Viewed 8644 times

But as I thought it will not boot, I get the message "No bootable medium found fatal system halted"
How to make bootable?

Thank you

[mpack]

I create an iso with the following files...

An ISO is just an image of a CD, so what you are saying is that you copied those files onto a CD. Copying files onto a CD does not make a bootable CD.

... and converted into .vdi

How did you do that? VirtualBox has no tool for transforming ISO to VDI. If all you did was use "VBoxManage convertfromraw ..." then that operation is not useful. All that does is create a virtual disk whose sectors are filled with an ISO image. It wouldn't even contain a recognizable filesystem, so that is even further from being a bootable disk than the ISO was.

How to make bootable?

The easiest way would be to create a DOS VM with a working system drive, mount the ISO, and copy the files off of the ISO onto the DOS hdd.

What is it that you're trying to recover? Almost everything I see in your picture consists of standard DOS OS files. If all you need is a working DOS OS then FreeDOS is easily available.

[Twin]

Thank you for your return.
This system is a numerical control machine.
I do not have source software, I can not distributed on a MS-DOS "new".

The e data recovery made me pass the data as a "raw" file and also a .vmdk file (for VMware)
VMware on the system works well except that I do not arrivre to commonality with the RS232 serial door.
I think with VirtualBox I ariverais better communicate.

To create my ISO file I took the "raw" files that I converted into ISO WinISO with the software and I use to convert .ISO VBoxManage in VDI.

I tried to convert the file to VMware but I do not understand how they did it I have a .vmx configuration file and 2 .VMDK files.


File MS-DOS.vmx :

Code: Select all

.encoding = "windows-1252"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "11"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "16"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "38586.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "sb16"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
hpet0.present = "TRUE"
displayName = "MS-DOS"
guestOS = "dos"
nvram = "MS-DOS.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
powerType.powerOn = "soft"
powerType.suspend = "soft"
powerType.reset = "soft"
extendedConfigFile = "MS-DOS.vmxf"
uuid.bios = "56 4d c1 1e c5 a9 6e 90-eb 35 3c a1 f1 37 e0 ae"
uuid.location = "56 4d c1 1e c5 a9 6e 90-eb 35 3c a1 f1 37 e0 ae"
replay.supported = "FALSE"
replay.filename = ""
migrate.hostlog = ".\MS-DOS-bc572756.hlog"
ide0:0.redo = ""
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "32"
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "33"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:37:e0:ae"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
vmci0.id = "-643668794"
monitor.phys_bits_used = "42"
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "16384000"
vmotion.checkpointSVGAPrimarySize = "16384000"
cleanShutdown = "TRUE"
softPowerOff = "FALSE"
numa.autosize.vcpu.maxPerVirtualNode = "1"
numa.autosize.cookie = "10001"
serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.fileName = "COM1"
mks.keyboardFilter = "allow"
workingDir = "."
svga.autodetect = "FALSE"
svga.vramSize = "16384000"
gui.viewModeAtPowerOn = "fullscreen"
ide1:0.startConnected = "FALSE"
vhv.enable = "FALSE"
vpmc.enable = "FALSE"
disable_acceleration = "FALSE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"

File 38586.vmdk (1Ko)

Code: Select all

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=6c9e42d5
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="monolithicFlat"

# Extent description
RW 79220 FLAT "38586-flat.vmdk" 0

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "ide"
ddb.encoding = "windows-1252"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "78"
ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "11"
ddb.uuid.image="25b8612a-0249-439a-a86d-9a895992070d"
ddb.uuid.modification="f2ca8fcb-fa32-46a6-adbf-b791cb9fae2d"
ddb.uuid.parent="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.uuid.parentmodification="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders="78"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads="16"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors="63"

File : 38586-flat.vmdk (39 610 ko)

Best regards

[michaln]

Hard disks aren't ISOs! The whole WinImage step is a) a waste of time and b) actively harmful.

You should first try using the VMDK image with VirtualBox directly, and if it doesn't work, convert the raw hard disk image to a VDI with the vbox-img tool.

[mpack]

@Twin: you are obviously suffering from a rather common misconception that ISO is a generic term for a disk image, perhaps a bootable one in particular, and this error is coloring your decison making.

ISO is not a generic term. An ISO is an image of a data CD, pure and simple. It is called an ISO because the internal formatting follows the ISO-9660 data CD standard (or its newer variants), which specifies sector sizes and a filesystem. Any software which unpacks an ISO will expect to find these features inside. You can do two things with an ISO: (1) is to burn the image to a physical CD, (2) mount it as a virtual CD on the host PC or in VirtualBox.

An image of a hard disk or a floppy is not an ISO. Neither of these will contain an ISO 9660 filesystem (the filesystem on a DOS hard disk will be FAT16, on a floppy it would be FAT12). An image of a hard disk is just that - an image of a hard disk. It is not an ISO and copying the files into an ISO will do nothing useful, unless you plan to burn a CD.


As Michal says: if the people who gave you the raw disk image also gave you a VMDK, then you can almost certainly use the VMDK directly in a VirtualBox VM. Especially since the guest OS is DOS, meaning there are unlikely to be any complex drivers or hardware requirements to worry about.

[michaln]

The only possible stumbling block I can think of is disk geometry. Examining the MBR and the boot sector of the DOS partition should reveal the right values.

[Twin]

Thank you this information.
If I import the hard drive with the file "38586-flat.vmdk"

I have this error:

Code: Select all

Echec de l'ouverture du fichier de disque dur C:\Users\Damien\Desktop\Cintreuse\38586-flat.vmdk.

Could not get the storage format of the medium 'C:\Users\Damien\Desktop\Cintreuse\38586-flat.vmdk' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).

Code d'erreur : VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Composant : Medium
Interface : IMedium {05f2bbb6-a3a6-4fb9-9b49-6d0dda7142ac}
Fonction appelée : IVirtualBox {fafa4e17-1ee2-4905-a10e-fe7c18bf5554}
Code retourné : VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)

If I import the hard drive with the file "38586.vmdk" he create me a disk 2Gio and when I started I get the error message: "fatal no bootable medium found system halted"

[mpack]

I doubt that a DOS drive is intended to be 2GB. I'm not sure that anything prior to DOS 7 will even support that.

Clarify what you mean by "import the VMDK file"? You don't import a VMDK (or any other hard disk type). You simply create a new VM. When you get to the disk creation step you select "Use existing" and choose the vmdk file. It helps if you move the VMDK file set into the VM folder before selecting it, as that keeps everything neat and tidy in one place.

If you still have a problem then let's proceed like this :-

1. Please confirm that you had the .vmdk file and the raw image file in the same folder, when you tried to use the VMDK in VirtualBox.
2. Please tell me the exact size, in bytes, of the raw image file.
3. Please tell me the exact size, in bytes, of the VMDK file.
4. If the .vmdk file is very small, i.e. a few KB, then zip it up and attach the zip here.
5. It would also be useful if you use a hex editor and save, let's say, the first 16KB of data from the raw image file to a bin, and include this in the zip.

[Twin]

I do not have the software under the eyes, I tell you how I do in a moment.
I was doing you a zip file with two:
-a with raw data
-another VM with VMware.

download

[michaln]

Yes, the disk geometry is screwed up. Whoever created the VMDK image didn't quite understand what they were doing. The C/H/S geometry of the disk is 930/5/17. The 38586.vmdk file needs to look like this:

Code: Select all

# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=6c9e42d5
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="monolithicFlat"

# Extent description
RW 79220 FLAT "38586-flat.vmdk" 0

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "ide"
ddb.encoding = "windows-1252"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "930"
ddb.geometry.heads = "5"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "17"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "11"
ddb.uuid.image="5091006b-69b8-4890-8103-9f517d259e95"
ddb.uuid.modification="ea853f56-04cd-4c99-99af-cb67dea0f824"
ddb.uuid.parent="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.uuid.parentmodification="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders="930"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads="5"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors="17"

The only change is to Cylinders/Heads/Sectors (twice). With the above modified file (no changes to 38586-flat.vmdk) I get:

MS-DOS screenshot

twinshot.png (5.77 KiB) Viewed 8591 times

[Twin]

When the data recovery company to extract the data they did not know what was.
You managed boot with VirtualBox?
If so can you tell me how you did it or do without.
I give you my FTP access in private

[Twin]

Yes, I change the values you said and it works.
Thank you very much !!!
I want to understand what these values corresponds?
And how did you find if it's not too complicated to explain ?

[mpack]

You can easily find out about drive geometry using Google.