FATAL: No bootable medium found

[jc1]

I followed these instructions https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/con ... indows-10/ to install Ubuntu both as a dual boot OS and as a VirtuaBox appliance. I'm able to boot both into Windows and Ubuntu with no problem. I'm having a problem loading Ubuntu with VirtualBox from my Windows host.

I created the the vdmk file with:

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VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "C:\Users\jcald\VirtualBox VMs\ubuntu.vmdk" -rawdisk \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 -partitions 7

and also the ISO file from within Ubuntu. I tried adding both the ISO with the vdmk file in VirtualBox, and just the vdmk file. Either way, I get the "FATAL: No bootable medium found" error when I try to startup the VM.

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Log file:
00:00:04.747924 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=2, bootseq=0023
00:00:04.748285 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: CDROM boot failure code : 0003
00:00:04.748457 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from CD-ROM failed
00:00:04.748667 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=3, bootseq=0002
00:00:04.756467 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Hard Disk 0 failed
00:00:04.757237 VMMDev: Guest Log: No bootable medium found! System halted.

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>wmic diskdrive list brief /format:list 
Caption=SAMSUNG MZVLW256HEHP-000
DeviceID=\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0
Model=SAMSUNG MZVLW256HEHP-000
Partitions=6
Size=256052966400

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>VBoxManage.exe internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0
Number  Type   StartCHS       EndCHS      Size (MiB)  Start (Sect)
1       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0            100         2048
2       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0            128       206848
3       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0         175902       468992
7       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0          53000    360716288
4       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0            500    469260288
5       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0          13543    470284288
6       0x00  0   /0  /0   0   /0  /0           1024    498020352

[towo2099]

There is no bootloader in your partition 7, which you have as raw-disk. So that disk is never bootable.

[mpack]

By "partition 7" I'm sure Towo means your Ubuntu partition, otherwise what he says is quite correct.

In order for a PC to boot it follows these steps (MBR, but EFI is essentially the same):

1. PC starts executing BIOS.
2. BIOS looks for bootable disks (disks containing primary boot code in sector 0: floppies, CDs and HDs are checked).
3. BIOS loads and jumps to the boot code in the first bootable disk found.
4. (Behaviour from here depends on boot code. In the Win7 case...). Boot code loads and jumps to a boot manager.
5. Boot manager offers you a choice of boot partitions.
6. Boot manager jumps to the secondary boot code in the selected partition.

If your VM only maps one partition then you fail at step 2, because your partition has secondary code intended to be started by a boot manager, it was never intended to be loaded by a BIOS. Your image doesn't even contain a partition map.

For it to work, your VMDK has to include an extra extent containing a dummy primary boot sector and partition map, i.e. an MBR. This is discussed somewhat in the user manual.

p.s. I will not address what the blog tells you. If a tutorial is from this site then we support it, otherwise it doesn't exist. You'd have to go to them if you want an explanation of what they wrote.