Windows hangs during startup

[ksweeney]

Windows 2000 hangs during startup. Linux host, Windows 2000 guest from an existing physical installation. Virtualbox is installed correctly, it finds the rawdisk image and starts to boot, Windows ask me to choose a hardware configuration and bootup continues. The Windows bootup hangs at the last 3 'dots' on the progress bar. (black screen, white progress bar across the bottom)

I have read 'How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox'. My assumption is (following the order in the howto) that I must have the correct HAL because it is reading the hard drive. (I did use MergeIDE).

I do not have 'agp440.sys' or 'intelppm.sys' anywhere on my system.

The manual mentions I/O timing issues during installation of Windows 2000 but says that they are not a problem once installed. I also do not have any of the symptoms described for the I/O problem.

Thanks

Kevin

[vbox4me2]

You can still have the wrong HAL, the one that works is:

Code: Select all

\VB_W2KsP4_KRNL\SingleCore
19-06-2003  13:05            66.848 HAL.DLL
06-03-2007  06:04         1.693.888 NTOSKRNL.EXE

[jeffebert]

I am also having trouble migrating a Windows 2000 physical installation to VirtualBox. Like Kevin, I used MergeIDE and I do not have 'agp440.sys' or 'intelppm.sys'. I also ran repair from the W2K setup disk.

The boot sequence hangs when the white bar gets all the way to the end. At that point, I expect it to switch from text mode to graphics mode, but it never does.

In C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32>

dir hal*
12/07/99 05:00a -a------ 81184 hal.dll

dir nto*
12/07/99 05:00a -a------ 1640976 ntoskrnl.exe

Note that I had to repair with an original Windows 2000 setup disk, so that is why the dates are old. Before the repair, they were as follows:

$ ls -l HAL* NTOS*
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 82176 2003-06-19 13:05 HAL.DLL
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1690880 2007-03-05 07:51 NTOSKRNL.EXE

Same dates as yours, vbox4me2, but still different sizes.

Is there anything I can do to debug the boot sequence to see what is causing a hang? I've tried F8 -> Safe Mode and F8 -> Debugging Mode but the result was the same in each case.

Thanks,
-Jeff

[vbox4me2]

There is one simple solution for this, install the OS again in a VM, run latest service packs, then either use backup/restore the real machine into the VM(without overwriting system files) or copy whatever you need from it to your migrated VM.

As with any migration you do need to make sure any service or other auto starting components that are tied to hardware are set to manual including device drivers that are hardware specific, ea. video drivers and such(remove them).

[jeffebert]

I looked for a boot log after safe booting by going into the recovery console, but I was not able to find one.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/202485

Thanks,
-Jeff

[jeffebert]

There is one simple solution for this, install the OS again in a VM, run latest service packs, then either use backup/restore the real machine into the VM(without overwriting system files) or copy whatever you need from it to your migrated VM.

Is there a backup/restore tool that is actually intelligent enough (about Windows) not to overwrite the system files? If I have to determine that myself, then I'm afraid it will be a long process. I'm trying to keep the entire image intact rather than just preserve my data.

I read a little about sysprep. Does anybody have any experience with that?

I'm also thinking about going through VMware converter and then converting that to run in VB. I've read a couple of success stories with that.

Thanks,
-Jeff

[vbox4me2]

ntbackup will work fine but you need to know how to restore it, sysprep is not recommended if you want to keep your sids intact. vmware convertor might also work. It depends alot on whats on the original system, after you sorted that out you plan by which steps you migrate, there is no one way and more trial & error.

[jeffebert]

Thanks again, vbox4me2. I will try a few things later this week and report back.

There must be a way to get Windows to report what it is doing during boot!?

Thanks,
-Jeff

[vbox4me2]

There is but it's useless.

[jeffebert]

I've more or less successfully migrated from a physical Windows 2000 install to a VirtualBox VM.

First, I made a backup image using ntbackup running on the physical installation. Then, I installed Win2K from an old setup CD in a new VM. I believe that I installed the VB guest additions at this point. Then, I upgraded it to SP4. Finally, I did a full restore using ntbackup. After restarting, the Win2K OS recognized all the hardware changes. I installed the VB guest additions again, and reconfigured the video. Finally, I re-ran MS update and it patched a few things.

At this point, I need to do some clean-up of services and devices that I no longer use in the VM, but it does appear to work. I cannot say that this was a smooth process, however. There were a few times that the guest OS spontaneously rebooted, especially when trying to get it fully upgraded with all MS's patches. I would not want to have to do it again. So, YMMV.

By the way, I also tried to migrate this Win2K install using VMware P2V Converter. Despite disabling a lot of devices and services, it was unable to boot in VMware Server. It didn't hang like it did when I originally tried to boot in VirtualBox. Instead, it got all the way past both the black-and-white and the full graphics boot screens, and then it blue-screened, saying that it could not locate the boot device. Makes no sense, since it already booted at that point.

-Jeff

[vbox4me2]

Welcome to the club of people who persisted against advice and got it working anyway like I said its perfectly doable but be prepared and think about whats happening in order to fix it.

[bapu]

I was hoping this thread would help me to understand why on two W2K server machines I run mergeide and one installs into a VM perfectly and has been up and running for over 4 days now. However the second machine installed into my second VM only boots to solid progress bar that say "Windoew 2000 Sever" above it and then hangs.

Both installs were done via Ghost images of the OS. I'm not usre if this makes a difference but the good install was from a PIII processor and the "bad" install was done from a P4 processor (925 or 930).

Also my first VM's OS drive (c:) was installed in the first vdi file on an empty drive. The second VM's OS drive (c:) was installed on the second vdi file on that same drive. Is that an acceptable way to do this?

[vbox4me2]

In such case it might be worth to try this: copy(clone) your running w2k VM and via ntbackup/restore the bad one into the copy VM, don't overwrite system files, this should work. Another remark, you can ghost back 2 machines to 2 VDI's but do seperate them between different VM's before booting, once one or the other boots the second VDI can get altered so it won't boot anymore.

[bapu]

vbox4me2,

I'm not quite following your suggestion. Could you restate it based upon the following names

DCLIVE = The original DC computer
DCVM = the VM made form the Ghost backup of DCLIVE
EXLIVE = The original Exchange computer
EXVM = the VM makde from the Ghost backup of EXLIVE

Thanks.

[vbox4me2]

Copy DCVM to EXVM.
Ntbackup EXLIVE.
Restore this ntbackup into EXVM, do not overwrite system files in \windows\...
See the FAQ and the QuickClick FAQ about cloning a VDI the easy way.