[Solved] FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

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VirtualPete
Posts: 3
Joined: 6. Mar 2018, 20:49

[Solved] FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by VirtualPete »

I have a Lenovo Y50-70 laptop with 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD running Windows 10 Home Edition 64-bit.

I want to install a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit guest in my VirtualBox.

As the laptop doesn't come with an internal DVD drive, I created an ISO from the Win7 installation DVD, and stored it in my Documents folder.

In order to install a 64-bit OS, I've enabled Virtualization in the BIOS.

I've created the new Virtual Machine with the default settings: 2 GB RAM provided, 32 GB dynamic space for the VDI.
When I run it for the first time, it asks me for the start-up disk.
I browse to select the Windows 7 ISO file I just created.

But then a "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." error message appears. See "Win7-2018-03-06-14-09-20-No-EFI" log file.
When I open the Virtual Machine settings, the "Acceleration" tab shows the "Enable VT-x/AMD-V" and "Enable Nested Paging" check boxes are checked.

I then go to the "Motherboard" tab, and see that the "Enable EFI" check box is unchecked, so I check that option.

I start the Virtual Machine again, and I get an UEFI Interactive Shell.
It indicates mapping table with BLK0 and BLK1, then a Shell prompt, and now I'm lost. See "Win7-2018-03-06-14-18-23-EFI" log file.

Is this the correct way to load the Windows ISO installer? What should I do next?
Attachments
Win7-2018-03-06-14-18-23-EFI.txt
With EFI
(125.76 KiB) Downloaded 156 times
Win7-2018-03-06-14-09-20-No-EFI.txt
No EFI
(100.84 KiB) Downloaded 45 times
Last edited by socratis on 8. Mar 2018, 23:31, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Marked as [Solved].
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by socratis »

For future reference you should ZIP your logs. It helps save a (virtual) tree or two...

No bootable medium means exactly that. Your ISO is not bootable. I don't know how you created the ISO, but simply copying the files from the Win7 installation medium to an "ISO", does not make it bootable. You need a 1-to-1 copy of the medium.

Plus, don't enable EFI, that won't help you. Stick with the defaults.
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.
andyp73
Volunteer
Posts: 1631
Joined: 25. May 2010, 23:48
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Assorted Linux, Windows Server 2012, DOS, Windows 10, BIOS/UEFI emulation

Re: FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by andyp73 »

For Windows hosts, I have found the best tool for creating ISO images either from a physical disk or from a directory of files is ISO Recorder. It has come in handy many a time when trying to get files into a VM.

-Andy.
My crystal ball is currently broken. If you want assistance you are going to have to give me all of the necessary information.
Please don't ask me to do your homework for you, I have more than enough of my own things to do.
VirtualPete
Posts: 3
Joined: 6. Mar 2018, 20:49

Re: FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by VirtualPete »

socratis wrote:For future reference you should ZIP your logs. It helps save a (virtual) tree or two...

No bootable medium means exactly that. Your ISO is not bootable. I don't know how you created the ISO, but simply copying the files from the Win7 installation medium to an "ISO", does not make it bootable. You need a 1-to-1 copy of the medium.

Plus, don't enable EFI, that won't help you. Stick with the defaults.
Didn't work.

I created an ISO with ISO Recorder, and still have the same issue: No bootable medium found.
I'm able to open the ISO file and execute the installation file without problems, but somehow VirtualBox doesn't recognize the ISO as a bootable media.

I disabled EFI, ran the virtual machine, and nothing.

Went to the BIOS, disabled virtualization, created a new 32 bit virtual machine, selected the ISO when VirtualBox asked for the startup-disk, started the virtual machine, and still get the same error message.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by socratis »

Once again, I want to highlight the difference between having a bunch of files, and having a bunch of files in the correct place. That's why I said
VirtualPete wrote:simply copying the files from the Win7 installation medium to an "ISO", does not make it bootable
And it doesn't matter what tool you use. If your source isn't bootable, you can't make a bootable copy.[1]


[1]: You could but that's not your problem, neither the forum.
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.
VirtualPete
Posts: 3
Joined: 6. Mar 2018, 20:49

[SOLVED] FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by VirtualPete »

Oh I see.
I had to re-create the ISO file with a bootable option. It took me some time to do a research online as it was not as straightforward as I tought.

Thanks for the help!!
Last edited by socratis on 8. Mar 2018, 23:29, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removed unnecessary verbatim quote of the whole previous message.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

Post by socratis »

Great, thanks for the feedback. And thank you for marking the topic as [Solved]... ;)
Although, we typically edit the first post and mark it as [Solved], since that's the one showing in the topics list and in the search engines. I'll do it, don't worry...
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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