Hey all,
I've tried searching but, haven't found anything relevant to my situation. But that might be because I'm a virtualization newbie and don't fully understand it.
I have a Windows 10 laptop using UEFI. I've made a VHD of the hard drive using Disk2VHD. I have a host laptop, using BIOS, and running Windows 10. I'm trying to get the VHD I made from the UEFI laptop to run as a guest on the BIOS laptop, but it won't boot. I get an error about "can't find media". I can turn on the "Enable EFI" setting on the VM, but that boots into a shell that I can't get out of.
Is what I'm trying to do possible? I'm guessing maybe a BIOS host can't run a UEFI guest, but I can't seem to find the answer.
Thanks,
Joe
Boot uefi vhd on bios computer
-
socratis
- Site Moderator
- Posts: 27329
- Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
- Primary OS: Mac OS X other
- VBox Version: PUEL
- Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
- Location: Greece
Re: Boot uefi vhd on bios computer
99.999% that's where things didn't go as planned. For example, if you selected just a partition and not the whole disk.Joe Thompson wrote: I've made a VHD of the hard drive using Disk2VHD.
That's not the whole error, is it?Joe Thompson wrote: I get an error about "can't find media".
As you should. Your Win10 was setup to boot from EFI, it won't boot with a BIOS setting.Joe Thompson wrote: I can turn on the "Enable EFI" setting on the VM
That's because it can't find any bootable media. See the first point.Joe Thompson wrote:that boots into a shell that I can't get out of.
Depends. Hard to say with that information alone. It's definitely doable.Joe Thompson wrote:Is what I'm trying to do possible?
No, that's not it. It's a virtulization software, so that is definitely possible. What makes your host sing, has absolutely nothing what makes your guest sing...Joe Thompson wrote: I'm guessing maybe a BIOS host can't run a UEFI guest
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
-
mpack
- Site Moderator
- Posts: 39134
- Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
- Primary OS: MS Windows 10
- VBox Version: PUEL
- Guest OSses: Mostly XP
Re: Boot uefi vhd on bios computer
Some physical PC non-EFI BIOSes can still recognize and boot from a GPT partitioned disk, but AFAIK the VirtualBox BIOS doesn't support this. You have to be in EFI mode for the VirtualBox BIOS to recognize GPT.Joe Thompson wrote:I'm guessing maybe a BIOS host can't run a UEFI guest, but I can't seem to find the answer.
As to why it goes to the shell... Frankly I've not had a lot of luck with VirtualBox EFI. I recently installed a Linux from scratch under EFI, worked fine... but next day it was booting to the shell. It required a modification to the boot script to fix it.
You might like to look into tools to convert GPT disks into MBR disks. If the drive has a logical size <2TB then it should be possible. You'd want the tool on a bootable recovery CD.