New to Virtualbox, but need help

[Bigwozza]

Hi all,

First of all apologies - with more time I would read the whole forum (well relevant bits) before posting.

Please feel free to just point me to relevant reading material, I don't mean to ask you to re-write stuff already written.

I'm VERY time constrained and need to try and get this sorted by this weekend - next 4-5 days.

I'm not new to IT - have 38 yrs experience - BUT we never stop learning.

Problem.

I have an HP laptop (Pavilion ZT3010 - about 4 years old) running XP Pro +SP2 + a heap of software (everything from Tax software to Imaging server software). This is all up and running fine.

I have a new HP laptop (Centrino 2 DV5-1010TX) running Vista Ultimate 64 and heaps of RAM and Disk.

I have a new install of Virtualbox 2.0.4 installed.

I need to virtualise my old laptop (at least for a few months). I thought the answer was easy and I needed to use ACRONIS Workstation Echo to create an Image of my old system, and then import it into VirtualBox.

Then I read the "How to" on the VB website- (How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox) but it left me confused. I think I understand the bit about the HAL, but it seemed to me that I had to :

Start Virtualbox and create a virtual machine (XP Pro) first. I assume this because it says :

We assume that either a physical Windows installation (I DO) or a VMware image is the source of migration (I DON'T) . It is also assumed that a suitable virtual disk image (either VDI or VMDK for VirtualBox >= 1.4) is already present.

By this I assume it means a built VM in VB. Or does it mean I set up a "shell" VM and just name it ??

Not sure after this, as it seem pretty critical to get this bit right first.

I really do appreciate any help you can give. I know I need to RTFM and will once I get the foundations in place.

Many thanks

Warwick

[TerryE]

Warwick, Welcome to our forum. You might want to take this opportunity to browse the Forum Posting Guide. This contains some useful tips on how to search for VBox knowledge and how to frame Qs. The google search tricks are particularly useful for mining discussions on this and you will find quite a few, so have a browse.

OK, so you are a pure Windows man, at least as PCs go. You have two problems: (1) getting your old partition images onto your Vista Laptop and (2) getting them to boot in VBox. Let's take them one at a time. The VDI format is a container format and there isn't a native host tool within VBox to load a VDI. You need to use some form of liveCD running in a VM. I don't know if ACRONIS do a liveCD, but there are tools such as Clonezilla which can run native from a physical liveCD on your Laptop and from ISO in a VM or your New.

The second issue is really to do with the intolerance of Windows. Your VM will have a completely different H/W profile to the old PC, and this could cause the boot sequence to hang. You basically need to remove these (wrong) H/W specific drivers and make a few other changes to allow XP to boot.

I could go into more details but I'd just be repeating what's been said before on the forum. So have a browse and come back with any specific Qs.

[hoegi]

Hi Warwick,
I had the same problem, but my Notebook was running Windows 2000.

I used Acronis to do a backup, and create an emergency boot CD for restoration (be sure to save 'your COmputer', not 'your data'). Then I created a new VB machine with enough RAM and disk space and booted it on the boot CD. Then, I first restored the whole disk, then only the MBR in two steps an rebooted the VM.

After restoration the system was running fine. I just had to install the guest additions and now the "old notebook" is running smoother than ever before - nice experience.

However, WinXP may be more tricky due to some drivers and it might be good to have a Windows setup CD with the right version to eventually repair the 'WindXP in VB' installation. There are some hints in the VB page as well: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows
To get an installation CD with the right version you might use slipstreaming (http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsX ... ootcd.html)

My host system was Windows XP SP 2.

Good luck. It might be worth the effort.

[Bigwozza]

Hi hoegi,

Thanks for the great help. It was exactly what I was looking for

Unfortunately I will have to do some reading !!! It seems my installation of VB can not see the external (USB) HDD where the Acronis image is located. I think I have done all the right things with enabling USB etc (I did have it working on my old laptop).

I must be doing something wrong so time to RTFM. In the meantime I might just copy the image to a "shared" folder and install from there - it if will let me

Once again, thanks

Warwick

[Bigwozza]

Hmmm !! and I thought this was going to be easy.

OK so I have taken the trouble to uninstall VB, rebooted and re-installed the latest and greatest VB -0 but somehow the uninstall doesn't do a good job and "remembers" the settings - not what I wanted.

New install - Set preferences for my machine (drive/path where VM's shuold reside - in my case E:\Virtualmachines )

Create a new VM with increased default settings (RAM, Disk etc). Setup Shared folders. configure USB for
- Enable USB Controller
- Enable USB 2.0

Start new machine with Acronis Boot disk in CD drive
Try to perform a restore in Acronis
I can see restore from:
o 3.5" Floppy drive A (which I didn't configure as I don't have a floppy)
o CD Drive (C:)
o FTP Connections
o Network

I can't see my own HDD (C: D: or E:)
I can't see the external USB drive either.

I have tied changing USB settings and it "appeared" to install USB drivers on the HOST - even though drivers for these devices are up and running - I assume these are VB's USB drivers.

Started over and got no change.

Is there a problem with VB under Vista Ultimate 64 bit ??

[hoegi]

Hi Bigwozza,
possible too soon to give up. It is possible that Acronis won't see USB bound disk drives as a source of backup when starting from the emergency disk at all - at this stage, there may be no drivers for it.
I would try to copy the files to a network share on the host computer. Then, set up the network of the VB to use host interfaces so it gets an own IP adress within the host's subnetwork.
Hopefully, the share could be seen beneath the network section when Acronis comes up.
Good luck,
hoegi

[Bigwozza]

Hi Hoegi,

Not giving up but do have some issues. Right now if I boot (inside VB) from the Acronis Boot disk - it sees NO HDD at all and no USB either. I copied the backup to the local, shared folder, but under Acronis Boot disk I can't see ANY HDD - only the CD, Floppy etc

Right now I'm just trying to download VMWare Workstation to try that first - unfortunately the VMWare site has gone down.

I'll try again tomorrow. I might have to create a VB machine and install XP then install Acronis on that machine. Maybe then I can see the shared folder/USB HDD and restore from there.

Its funny though because I have no problem if I try this on an XP machine so I'm not sure if it is Vista - 64bit - or my new hardware. Looks like a process of elimination is required

I'll keep you posted

thanks

Warwick

[Sasquatch]

For the USB device, be sure to mount it in the VM too. Right click the USB icon and select your external drive. Do this before Acronis starts, so it can detect it.

As for the network share, just NAT is enough, the connect to 10.0.2.2 as that will be directed to the Host.

[Bigwozza]

Things have gone from bad to worse !!

I was making progress - but no longer

First of all things looked better and I could finally see the USB HDD. but when I booted Acronis to restore the Acronis backup from the USB drive, it couldn't see the local HDD.

I then forgot about Acronis and did an XP install - (Total disk size = 90GB) formatting C: (30GB) as I went. All was fine and XP was running. Then I tried the Acronis restore again. This time it saw the 30GB - but not the remaining space. Go to XP and format the remaining 60GB and back to Acronis. It now sees 2 partitions - all good. The Acronis backup has 2 partitions to restore.

I try to do a restore - just C: to start with, then tried the whole disk - I get the same problem each time :- It just stalls !! I wait for an hour each time and there is no progress. The USB HDD shows busy, but not the local HDD.

I then tried copying the Acronis (.tib) file from the USB HDD to a "shared" directory on the Host HDD.

Restarted everything - but no matter what I do I can't see the shared directory - I seem to remember I have always had this problem (on older versions I tried 6 months ago).

SO NOW I have a problem that I can't mount the USB HDD because of a stuff up. I have un-installed VB and deleted files, tried to remove "stuff" (see below) from the registry but when I re-install it still can't mount the USB drive.

All I can ever get now is:

USB device 'Generic External' with UUID
{65d500e0-4478-44ed-8ccf-715cea743d43} is busy with a previous request. Please try again later.

Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x89979957)
Component: HostUSBDevice
Interface: IHostUSBDevice {173b-4b44-d268-4334-a00d-b6521c9a740a}
Callee: IConsole {e3c6d4a1-a935-47ca-b16d-f9e9c496e53e}

NOTE: Stuff deleted from the registry once VB was uninstalled were the two entries
{173b-4b44-d268-4334-a00d-b6521c9a740a}
and
{e3c6d4a1-a935-47ca-b16d-f9e9c496e53e}


Any thought anyone ? And any idea why an unistall doesn't un-install all the components ??

thanks

[hoegi]

Please have a look at http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=10907
I know this is WinXP stuff and an old scanner, but perhaps there are similar effects on Vista. And perhaps it is necessary to make sure the USB device is not used by Vista (but how to do this? - I guess it may be possible to switch it off in the device manager).

[mpack]

Rather than messing with USB - which can bring its own support problems - one could just create a second VDI attached to an existing VM, copy the Acronis image into that, then attach the VDI to the new VM.

[The MAZZTer]

Acronis might not be able to use USB drives, if it's DOS based. You might have better luck putting Acronis on the USB drive and booting off of it directly... that might give you better luck.

But, I recommend you cut Acronis and USB drives out of the equation and do something simpler.

Here is what I recommend you do:

First, make a raw disk image of the laptop drive you want to put in a VM. One way to do this is to boot from a Linux live CD and use the terminal "dd" command:

dd if=/dev/sda of=<target>

Will do the job on Ubuntu of imaging the fiist hard drive in the system.

The main problem is where to put it... if your desired host comp has Windows you can make a writable folder share, install the SMBFS package on the live cd, and then mount the share in linux and just write to it like any other folder.*

Or you can just put it on the USB drive and move it from computer to computer.

Of course you'll need some space to store this raw disk image temporarily, it will be as big as the TOTAL drive size on the old laptop. Keep that in mind.

Once you do that, run "vboxmanage.exe convertdd <that raw disk image> OldLaptop.vdi" and you'll get a vdi of your laptop image, compressed for you so it should be smaller.**

Then you just make a new VM in VirtualBox, and choose the new VDI to use as the hard disk in it. Then boot from it, and you should just need to install Guest Additions.

* - If I'm skipping over too many details I'll be happy to clarify, just ask.

** - Better compression can be done from precompacting and then compacting... that's outside the scope of my little tutorial here.

[Bigwozza]

Rather than messing with USB - which can bring its own support problems - one could just create a second VDI attached to an existing VM, copy the Acronis image into that, then attach the VDI to the new VM.

Hi mpack,

I'm not sure I follow you here - sorry If you are saying go create a new Virtual Machine - lets call it MC2 then use that in place of my original VDI (by moving/renaming) then somehow copy the Acronis backup - laptop.tib into the new VDI now attached to my old VM (how ??).

See my later posts

thanks for your help though - there is always more than one way of doing these things I know.

Warwick

[Bigwozza]

Acronis might not be able to use USB drives, if it's DOS based. You might have better luck putting Acronis on the USB drive and booting off of it directly... that might give you better luck.

Acronis is Linux based but is a complete Backup/Restore UI.

Don't really want to get into using raw Linux at this stage even though I have a very good understanding of Unix (AIX/HPUX mostly and SCO Unix from 20 years ago)

thanks for the thought though

Warwick

[Bigwozza]

OK - well I have restored from a system restore point as at yesterday AM and then un-installed VB, rebooted, re-installed VB (2.0.4 - as before).

I made sure all old VDI etc files were blown away and created a new VM. Using Acronis I booted the new machine and looked for the USB hard drive - not loaded. So I tried to attach the USB drive. It said on the HOST system is was installing the VB USB drivers. I let it do that. I then shut down the VM and re-booted the Host.

Restarted everything and went to attach the USB HDD - go the error again from yesterday. Shut down the VM and swapped the mouse and HDD USBs and rebooted the VM with Acronis - attached the USB HDD - Now can't see the VM hard drive. Reboot with Windows XP and install - create two partitions and format.

Shut down VM and re-start with Acronis. now sees USB HDD and VM HDD - Gettting there.

Restore C: drive from Acronis - USB HDD light is red. Nothing much happening. Go and mow the grass - come back find out it must have been verifying the archive. I can now restore Drive C:.

It is running as I type but it is only 21GB and it say it will finish in 9 hours. Once I have this partition restored I have to do the D: drive at 40GB (18 Hours ????).

then I suppose I need to restore the MBR.

Looks like USB 2 on VB in a Vista Ultimate 64 is not very efficient

I'll let you know if it works

thanks

Warwick