"FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
Brian Kush
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Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

"FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

I have been resizing the hard drive on virtual box for a number of years and it's pretty straight forward. Use VBoxManage in terminal on the mac, then go into windows and allocate the space.

Today I went in and executed the standard command to increase the size from 55Gb to 65Gb.

Code: Select all

VBoxManage modifyhd "/Users/...../bk.vdi" --resize 65000
When I go into the Virtual Box Manager I see the .vdi under storage and it's (Normal, 63.48Gb) but get the FATAL: error when trying to start the machine.

The log file looks pretty standard like it cannot see the file, but the fact that it knows it's 63.48Gb would indicate it is seeing it.

00:00:50.116607 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=1, bootseq=0231
00:00:50.116859 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Floppy 0 failed
00:00:50.117137 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=2, bootseq=0023
00:00:50.117602 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: CDROM boot failure code : 0003
00:00:50.117817 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from CD-ROM failed
00:00:50.118072 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=3, bootseq=0002
00:00:50.118878 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Hard Disk 0 failed
00:00:50.119687 VMMDev: Guest Log: No bootable medium found! System halted.
00:01:04.839132 Display::handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=0000000000000000 w=720 h=400 bpp=0 cbLine=0x0 flags=0x1


Any ideas on what may of happened?

Virtual Box - Version 5.1.6 r110634 (Qt5.5.1)
Mac OS - Mac OS Sierra 10.12
Brian Kush
Posts: 7
Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

I should have caught it before, but I am on 10.12 and there may be an issue with VB and the new version of Mac OS. When I upgraded to 10.12 I also upgraded VB to the latest and everything has been going good until I did the resize command. Not sure what layer the issue may have been introduced. I'll keep digging and any thoughts on how to recover the .vdi file welcome.
mpack
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by mpack »

Do you intend to keep the guest OS version a mystery?
socratis
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by socratis »

Brian Kush wrote:there may be an issue with VB and the new version of Mac OS
Or the issue?
As they say in Wiki-talk: {citation needed] ;)
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Brian Kush
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Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

Sorry it's Windows 7
socratis
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by socratis »

And what was the issue with 10.12? With the VM completely shutdown, right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager. Select "Show Log". Save it (the last one), zip it and attach it.

PLEASE, do not obfuscate the information given. There is nothing dangerous in showing your username. There is a danger if something may lead to trouble because of the username and we don't know about it.
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.
Brian Kush
Posts: 7
Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

Here is the log file. I'm not sure it was an issue with 10.12, it was just that this is the first time I tried to extend a .vdi on that version of Mac OS
Attachments
QuickBooks-2016-10-19-14-57-34.log
(92.83 KiB) Downloaded 30 times
socratis
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by socratis »

A rather well set up VM. Now, you say that the "--resize" command failed to produce a bootable HD. Did you receive any error messages when you executed the command, or it just went through smoothly? Can you download GParted, boot the VM from it and take a look at the information presented?

There should be nothing wrong with 10.12 and VirtualBox. Nothing so far at least has come up.
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.
mpack
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by mpack »

If you have access to a hex editor, save off the first 2MB+1K (2098176 bytes) to a binary file, zip it, and attach it here.

Scenario 1.
Do you know if the Windows drive was configured as a "Windows Dynamic Disk"? (not to be confused with VirtualBox dynamically allocated drive). If Windows Disk Manager gave the drive type as "Basic" then this was not used. If it said "Dynamic" then you may be in trouble.

Dynamic Disk (a.k.a. Logical Disk Manager) was an awful idea introduced in Win2k and deprecated in Win8 on, hence may have been used in a Win7 guest. If so it creates a hidden partition table at the top of the drive, and is therefore sensitive to the drive size being changed.

Scenario 2.
You mention having resized drives in the past. Do you know if you resized this drive in the past? If so, any idea when?
Brian Kush
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Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

The resize command worked fine and gave no error. I have resized this drive and I think the last time was about three months ago. I guessing that I have resized it a couple times and the only thing that has changed since the last time was the host OS upgrade. I don't think that Dynamic was used in Windows 7.

Could not attach the file got a "The attachment’s file size is too large, the maximum upload size is 2 MB. Please note this is set in php.ini and cannot be overridden." error.

File can be seen here:

https://app.box.com/s/px5fwuxwg9lmly9ejjx7puh91dhpqmbi
mpack
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by mpack »

As I said before, zip the binary file and then attach it here.
Brian Kush
Posts: 7
Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

Zip file attached.
Attachments
Hex_Dump.zip
(210.55 KiB) Downloaded 18 times
mpack
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Posts: 39156
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by mpack »

I'll take a closer look tomorrow, but at first glance it looks like the boot sector has been erased - it is all zeros, meaning there is no boot code and no partition map. It might as well be an unformatted disk. As far as I can tell the header is fine, but the disk image is blank all they way out to the end of the portion you provided. You could open the VDI yourself in CloneVDI and look for non blank sectors in the clone viewer.

Second thing I notice is that the VDI blocks are 4K aligned. That makes this VDI relatively old, maybe a couple of years (in terms of the age of the VirtualBox version which created it).

Questions to consider:
1. you've had this VDI for a while apparently, so how old is the most recent backup?
2. After making a new backup, it might be worth seeing if the guest can be recovered using a recovery CD and "fixmbr".
3. Is there anything you haven't told us about the host drive? E.g. a record of failures, or the host drive is a network folder or USB drive.
Brian Kush
Posts: 7
Joined: 19. Oct 2016, 13:04

Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by Brian Kush »

I have been running this .vdi for a few years, so yes it is from a prior version on Virtual Box. I am on a Mac, so a number of the utilities you have mentioned are only available for a PC. I'm going to find a PC and take the .vdi and try to recover the MBR.

Nothing weird on the host. It's a MAC Book Pro with 500Gb drive and no issues with the drive have been reported.

I can go to a backup if needed, I think it is three weeks old.
socratis
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Re: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." after modifyhd --resize command

Post by socratis »

Brian Kush wrote:I am on a Mac, so a number of the utilities you have mentioned are only available for a PC. I'm going to find a PC and take the .vdi and try to recover the MBR.
The only "utility" that mpack mentioned was:
mpack wrote:using a recovery CD and "fixmbr".
That's not a utility, that's a bootable CD (mounted as virtual in the case of a VM) that you bot your VM from and run the "fixmbr" on the VM. No need for another PC (I'm on a Mac too). You can try Hiren's Boot CD.
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.
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