Need help exporting Encrypted VM

[SolarMan]

Hello, I had VirtualBox 6.1 on a windows host, and an encrypted Ubuntu 20.04 VM. Unfortunately my windows installation died and won't come back, though I do have a copy of my files including the VM hard drive.

Now I am on Ubuntu 22.04 host, and I would like to get this VirtualBox encrypted VM back, but I don't know how.. I think the keys were stored somewhere in C:\Users on the Windows host, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at.

I searched, but I could only find things that say "don't export encrypted VM's".. Please help

[scottgus1]

"don't export encrypted VM's"

There's a reason for this:

Exporting appliances which contain encrypted disk images is not possible because the OVF
specification does not support this. All images are therefore decrypted during export.

QED.

Another thing preventing exporting is that the old OS doesn't work anymore. So Virtualbox can't run to export.

However, if you can find the original VM's folder (and if you stored the VM's drive outside the VM folder get the file and the path to it too) then you can copy the folder over to the new host, doubleclick the VM's .vbox file to register the VM and run it.

[SolarMan]

hey, thank you for the reply

I have 2 hard drives in this laptop, a 256gb ssd and 2tb platter. I kept the VM disks on the platter drive, and the VM folder I imagine is on the SSD.

Can you expand on this a bit to help me understand? I need to find the VM folder off the SSD, which i imagine is in C:\Users\Me\VirtualBox

The part I am confused about is the path to the VM disk... the path I imagine will be all messed up since I went from Windows to Ubuntu Host, but is it possible to register the vbox file and change the path in settings to where it is in linux parlance?

And yeah, I know I know... I'm a raging dumbass for not RTFM. I use this VM for emails and stuff so I figured I would encrypt it for better security, but knowing what I know now, I don't think i'll use the encryption feature again, perhaps i'll just put the VM disk in a veracrypt container and do it that way so it is more portable

[mpack]

I need to find the VM folder off the SSD, which i imagine is in C:\Users\Me\VirtualBox

That folder is for global (all VMs and the manager) settings. On Windows hosts the VM folder is typically "C:\Users\You\VirtualBox VMs\<vmname>".