Error opening up VM in Ububtu. Possible Corrupt VDI?

[Shockmeister]

I recovered my set of VBox files from a corrupt Windows box. I am trying to open the VM now in a linux OS, but get the following error:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine PhD-Ubuntu.

Could not open the medium '/home/stephen/VirtualBox VMs/PhD-Ubuntu/PhD-Ubuntu.vdi'.

VDI: error reading pre-header in '/home/stephen/VirtualBox VMs/PhD-Ubuntu/PhD-Ubuntu.vdi' (VERR_EOF).

VD: error VERR_VD_VDI_INVALID_HEADER opening image file '/home/stephen/VirtualBox VMs/PhD-Ubuntu/PhD-Ubuntu.vdi' (VERR_VD_VDI_INVALID_HEADER).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: MediumWrap
Interface: IMedium {4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda}

The PhD-Ubuntu.vdi file is empty, however I have several snapshots. Is there any known issues with opening up a VM created in Windows on a Linux machine? Or is my VDI corrupt?

I have tried to replace the bytes at the start of the snapshot vdi with those of a new vdi (as detailed in other posts), but still get the same errors.

[Perryg]

Snapshots are differencing images and as such rely on the base ( VDI ) to provide the bulk of the structure to be able to run, so if the base is empty then the entire chain is corrupt. Only a backup can recover from this.

[Shockmeister]

Thanks PerryG