virtualbox.org

Hello Fellows,

I would like to know if I can reuse a VM(my guest OS) after reinstalling My Host and VirtualBox.

If I install a VM on some sort of external storage location, then I have to reinstall the Host(Windows7) and VirtualBox;
can I call my VM into my new installed VirtualBox and use it again?

Well, I hope I make some sense.


Thank you,
aroldgre

Sure you can. If the guest was created with versin => 4.0 you simply copy the entire guests folder to a safe place, install the host and VirtualBox, then put the guest back and dbl click the *.vbox file in the guests folder. If it was created before version 4 it can still be done but much harder especially if you have snapshots.

Thank you so very much Perryg for answering; however, I can't really visualize what you mean when you say "put the guest back and dbl click the *.vbox file in the guests folder".
Where should I put it back to? Do you mean to put it back into the VirtualBox VMs folder?

Well, windows 7 trips sometimes, I am thinking about jumping over to Linux!

I greatly appreciate what you guys are doing, you guys are my greatest books!

Thank you,
aroldgre

Where should I put it back to? Do you mean to put it back into the VirtualBox VMs folder?

That would be the easiest. Other than that you would need to change the default location in the preferences of VirtualBox.

Thanks again Perryg,
That would definitely get me going. Keep doing the great job!


Thank you,
aroldgre

If you made no changes to the default paths, then it's really easy. You open Explorer, go to C:\Users\<your user>\ and look for folders associated with VB. This can be .VirtualBox (may be hidden) and "VirtualBox VMs". Make a backup of these folders and restore them to the same location after you've installed Windows again. VB will automatically pick up everything you left with. If VB doesn't pick it up, then you may have missed something or it's not restored properly.

This is the first forum-like answer from google so I'm posting an update as of aug-2019
If you just reinstalled Virtualbox in the host even after a complete reinstall of the Host OS but you have the Entire Virtual machine folder and files untouched. A simple solution will be to just look for the .vbox file with the name of the machine inside its respective folder and double click it; this will restore the entire Machine with its configuration on the new Virtualbox installation.

White_King,
This is the second ancient thread that you are resurrecting. Please don't do it again, we don't really like locking threads.