VM's no longer showing in VirtualBox Manager

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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adzam
Posts: 9
Joined: 22. Aug 2016, 21:06

VM's no longer showing in VirtualBox Manager

Post by adzam »

I recently upgraded to 5.1.22. I did not have any issues with the upgrade and my VM's still worked perfectly.

Today I opened the VirtualBox Manager to launch a VM and all my VM's and snapshots are gone! The Manager is completely blank as if I just installed it. As stated everything still worked after the upgrade so where did they go? The actual VM files are still where they are supposed to be so I can easily re-add them, but I assume I will still have to redo the VBox settings for each VM.

Any suggestions and/or help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I just realized I can re-add the VM's and retain the settings, but I am still curious as to what happened.
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: VM's no longer showing in VirtualBox Manager

Post by scottgus1 »

Virtualbox will show an empty list if you logged in on a different account. You can add the guests to the new account, yes. The guests' settings will still remain set, but the main Virtualbox window's Preferences settings will need to be redone. If you are sure that you need the same Virtualbox settings on any account you log in on, you can set an environment variable (I think it's called VBOX_USER_HOME) to a public location on the host PC that any account has access to (like C:\Users\Public), then copy the ".Virtualbox" folder in C:\Users\{you} to the public location. Reboot the PC and see what you get. (Note that saving a copy of the ".Virtualbox" folder will save all the Preferences settings and the list of guests at the time that you saved the copy.)
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