[Solved] Could not read from the boot medium

[pealo86]

I have recently installed VirtualBox on my Mac and am trying to install Windows 7 on it. I have done this a couple times in the past alas it has not been for several years.

I was originally getting an error when booting my VB machine (although I forget what the error message was) which meant that I had to change the boot order so that Optical was at the top.

So I managed to fix that original problem... but now, however, I am getting the following error when booting:

Could not read from the boot medium! System halted

Does anyone know what this means or how I fix it?

[mpack]

It pretty much means what it says: the boot disk attached to the VM is not readable. What exactly is the boot medium? Is it a host CD drive? an ISO?

In fact, please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.

[pealo862]

Thanks, I've attached it to this post

(also Oracle will neither let me log in with my existing account nor will it let me reset my password... hence the new username!)

[mpack]

I was under the impression that you were trying to install Windows 7 into a VM, that you had so far not succeeded. Hence, I'd expect to see an Win7 setup ISO mounted in the VM... and I do not see that. How are you expecting to install Win7? You mentioned changing the boot order so that optical is first, which implies that you have a CD/DVD, but I don't see that you connected any CD/DVD to the VM.

Are you putting the CD/DVD into a host drive? That won't work until the VM is told to use the host drive, and AFAIK that won't work on a Mac either, because it doesn't have real CD drives that VirtualBox recognizes. What you should do is make an image of the CD/DVD (to .ISO, .DMG or .CDR format), and mount that in the VM instead of a host drive.

[socratis]

00:00:02.035491 [/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#1/] (level 4)
00:00:02.035493   Driver <string>  = "HostDVD" (cb=8)
00:00:02.035494 
00:00:02.035494 [/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#1/Config/] (level 5)
00:00:02.035496   Passthrough <integer> = 0x0000000000000000 (0)
00:00:02.035497   Path        <string>  = "HL-DT-ST DVDRW  GA11N" (cb=22)

This tells me that in the CD/DVD options for the VM, you have enabled the "Host" DVD, without passthrough. The latter is not a problem, but if you don't have a physical Win7 DVD inserted in your host's DVD drive, boot is going to fail. Which it does...

AFAIK that won't work on a Mac either, because it doesn't have real CD drives that VirtualBox recognizes.

That wouldn't be a correct statement. Of course it does work, why were you under the impression that it didn't? Even pass-through works flawlessly, which means that you can actually burn a DVD (even dual layer) from your guest. If your guest supports it...

[mpack]

Well, the "why" is included in the second part of my sentence which you quoted, ie. "because it doesn't have real CD drives". AFAIK, if it's an external CD drive operating as USB mass storage then it won't work. Has that changed? Also, I don't know Mac models, so I'm only guessing that the OP's is a recent one with no built in CD drive (because of the nature of his problem).

[pealo862]

My Mac is from 2009 and has a disk drive built into it with Windows disk inserted

[socratis]

@mpack
Your logic most certainly is correct. Those "geniuses" @Apple decided that a built-in DVD is no longer a mandatory accessory. You now have to have an external USB-based one. Time might prove them correct. That's why I included the model. It's a build-in ATAPI drive, a native one, so it should be working right-out-of-the-box.

@pealo86(2)
If you have a Windows disk inserted and you get the "Could not read from the boot medium", the assertion that mpack made originally still stands; the DVD is not readable. Corrupt, scratched or something else.

Can you open Disk Utility, select the DVD drive and create an image (choose CD/DVD master from the options)? Then use that image instead of the host-DVD to boot your VM?

[pealo862]

Thanks, it turned out it was the disc all along! Which is very strange as I only used it a few weeks ago on my MacBook

I've tried another Windows disc now and it appears to work fine

Thanks.

[socratis]

Cool. I'll mark the thread as [Solved] then...