could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

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Liviu
Posts: 4
Joined: 26. Feb 2014, 15:29

could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

Post by Liviu »

I created a new WM and cannot install the operating system from an USB drive because is not booting, I get the error: "could not read from the boot medium system halted". To be mentioned that the USB is good, I can boot from it on a physical machine. the VM has the storage configured as in the attached file, with the USB disk on SATA0 and the disk on SATA1. What am I doing wrong?
Thank you for your help!
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scottgus1
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Re: could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

Post by scottgus1 »

Are you trying to use Raw Disk Access to boot from the USB disk?

If so, to my knowledge Raw Disk Access requires that the physical disk be offline from the host OS and Windows won't offline USB disks. There was a way bandied about on the internet to do it, I never tried it. I have only used downloaded ISOs.

Otherwise, only Virtualbox EFI can boot from USB disks. Legacy BIOS cannot. It may be easier to either download an ISO CD image of the desired OS or convert the USB contents to an ISO CD image. Web-search either of these.
mpack
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Re: could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

Post by mpack »

I agree with the diagnosis, but I think a simpler solution should be possible: image the USB disk using any raw disk imager, e.g. Win32DiskImager. Then create a VMDK wrapper for the raw image file similar to the one created for raw disk access; but since the VMDK accesses a file and not a device, you won't have the permissions problems.
Liviu
Posts: 4
Joined: 26. Feb 2014, 15:29

Re: could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

Post by Liviu »

@scottgus1: Sorry for asking, but it's the first time I use Oracle VM. How to use "raw disk access"? I didn't find anything like that in the menus, settings. Is there anywhere a step-by-step procedure to do this? I already tried some procedures from internet, none worked so far...
@mpack: I will try this one too, even if I don't understand why a specific procedure needs to be followed, as long as I can boot from the USB on the real machine (including the host of the VM and the VM has same characteristics as the host), so the USB is good. I would have expected Oracle to make things easier, CDs are dying and USB are now the most used devices. It is absurd in my opinion to have different bootable USB devices for different machines. I would like to have only one USB per operating system, not per machine AND operating system.
Thank you for your answers!
scottgus1
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Re: could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

Post by scottgus1 »

Liviu wrote:How to use "raw disk access"?
I gathered from your using a "usbdisk.vmdk" that you were already trying raw disk, since that feature uses a .vmdk file.

Raw Disk Access is an experts-only feature, since the chances for hosing the whole PC are too large. We don't explain how to do it on the forum.

There are websites that explain how to install Linux on USB into Virtualbox by using Raw Disk, here is one I found by web-searching: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-a-us ... irtualbox/ I would assume, though I have not tried, that the process will work for any OS on the USB stick.
Liviu wrote:I would have expected Oracle to make things easier,
Oracle, like all app providers, are limited by the license under which an open-source program is distributed. Virtualbox is open-source-licensed, and the Legacy BIOS it uses to run the VMs is very old, and does not support USB boot.

Besides:
scottgus1 wrote:Virtualbox EFI can boot from USB disks.
So careful reading reveals that Oracle is advancing things.
Liviu
Posts: 4
Joined: 26. Feb 2014, 15:29

Re: could not read from the boot medium system halted booting from usb

Post by Liviu »

@scottgus1: Thank you for the information.
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