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Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 5. Jun 2009, 20:49
by midwestsimon
Just got VirtualBox running Win XP on my OS X. I restarted it to try and get it to recognize a usb device and got this message:

One or more virtual hard disks, cd/dvd or floppy media are not currently accessible. As a result you will not be able to operate virtual machines that use these media until they become accessible later.

Not really sure why I'm getting this message. Sorry if this is a repost, I couldn't find a similar problem on the forum.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 5. Jun 2009, 20:57
by Perryg
This usually happens when you install and then remove the cd before you shutdown the guest. Put the cd back in and boot tell it to unmount and you should be good to go.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 5. Jun 2009, 21:28
by midwestsimon
I can't get that far, as I can't get Windows to boot.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 5. Jun 2009, 21:38
by Perryg
Where did you install the guest? Was it an external HDD?
Have you tried to do a power cycle on the host? (cold boot)

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 5. Jun 2009, 21:59
by midwestsimon
It's installed right on my mac HD. I have done a full restart.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 5. Jun 2009, 22:23
by Perryg
If you try to start the guest and it says that it can not start then something went wrong in the install process. Since you have tried this after a reboot and it still does not work then you may need to install it again. I assume that you did not change any of the settings after the install, so it must be a corrupt install for reasons unknown. Remember that once the install is finished don't remove anything. Just tell it to restart. Windows should tell you to press any key to boot from the CD when it restarts, but if you don't press any key it will boot to the hard drive. After that you can take the CD out or unmount the CD image.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 6. Jun 2009, 03:56
by midwestsimon
Do you think this is going to be the case even though I had it up and running for awhile with no problems prior to closing it, and then having this problem?

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 23. Jan 2010, 20:51
by mandelmus
I got the same error message last night. Everything worked fine on the old version until I upgraded to VirtualBox v3.1.2 r56127.

As soon as I started up VirtualBox a pop-up window displayed the following error message ...
"One or more virtual hard disks, cd/dvd or floppy media are not currently accessible. As a result you will not be able to operate virtual machines that use these media until they become accessible later.

Press Check to open the Virtual Media Manager window and see what media are inaccessible, or press Ignore to ignore this message."
Here was my solution:
1) Clicked on the "Check" button and the "Virtual Media Manager" popped-up
2) Clicked on the "CD/DVD Images" tab
3) Selected the "VBoxGuestAdditions.iso" image that could be causing the problem
4) Clicked on the "Release" button
5) Clicked the "OK" button
6) I was then able to start the VDI

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 26. Jul 2010, 18:48
by james@birrell.me.uk
I have the same problem (also since installing an update - 3.2.6 r63112) but on trying Mandelmus's solution find that the release button is greyed out.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 26. Jul 2010, 19:29
by Perryg
When you open the virtual media manager do you see the warning symbol?
Have you clicked the tabs and looked at the one/s that are causing this?
You would need to click them and then the release tab will be available.
Be careful though. Depending on which release you upgraded from they changed the location of where the program files are located and if that is the case you would need to verify that the paths are set right in the preference settings.

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 29. Jul 2010, 16:08
by james@birrell.me.uk
There's no warning symbol when opening Virtual Media manager. In VMM under the Hard Disk tab I have XP.vdi. The file path given is correct. Under the CD/DVD Images tab I have VBoxGuestAdditions.iso, for which the location given is C:\PROGRA~1\Sun\VIRTUA~1\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso and which is said to be "not attached". I have not been able to locate that file.

If I click on XP.vdi the release button is then available but the earlier post referred to releasing the iso file. Clicking on that does not make the release button available.

In Preferences, the paths to the Default Hard Disk Folder and Default Machine Folder are correct.

James

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 30. Jul 2010, 15:50
by rpmurray
james@birrell.me.uk wrote:for which the location given is C:\PROGRA~1\Sun\VIRTUA~1\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso and which is said to be "not attached". I have not been able to locate that file.
There's your problem. VirtualBox thinks it's running on a Windows host, but you're using a Mac.

The path for the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso should be something like /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 30. Jul 2010, 17:06
by james@birrell.me.uk
Nope. I'm running Windows 7 64bit.
James

Re: Virtual hard disk not accessible.

Posted: 30. Jul 2010, 17:13
by Perryg
\PROGRA~1\Sun\VIRTU
I believe this has been changed to Oracle instead of Sun. You might want to check and see if the change has effected you.
I see where the confusion is. This is the MAC OS forum and your Windows as host should not be here. Some people have multiple hosts and their profile does not match their host at the time so we missed the improper host location.

Please create a new topic in the proper forum and we can continue there. This one locked since it is confusing hosts.