Windows 7 VHD image from an M.2 SSD disk not able to boot

[Cerilet]

Hello,

I have been trying to get this working since quite a few days, reading everything I find which I think is related with my issue but no luck so far.

• I have Windows 7 64-bit installed in an SSD M.2 format (Disk 1 on the image, sdb1 in Mint). It is a bootable partition as you can see.

• I have grub plus Linux Mint and other data partitions in an HDD (Disk 0 on the image, sdaX in Mint).

• I have used disk2VHD to create an image of W7.

W7 ZBook.jpeg (104.43 KiB) Viewed 3507 times

However, when I try to start W7 with VirtualBox in Mint (similar to Ubuntu for those who don't know), I get the blue screen with error code STOP 0x0000007B (not boot found). But in principle, W7 partition is bootable. If I disable the HDD, W7 starts automatically.

blue screen boot.jpeg (30.81 KiB) Viewed 3507 times

I have tried several controller configurations (PIIX3, PIIX4, AHCI, NVMe,...) enabling the Solid-state Drive but no luck either. With the first three, blue screen and then Windows starts on recovery mode, but with NVMe it cannot even find the partition where to boot from.

I have also tried to fix Windows using Windows recovery disk but not even like this.

Anyone with an idea about what might be happening?

Many thanks!

[scottgus1]

I gather that you are dual-booting Mint and Windows 7 on your physical PC. And when booting to Mint, you're trying to run the physical Windows 7 as a VM.

I recall that a 7B BSOD meant that the disk controller had changed, and Windows didn't know what to do about it. First, fix all that chipset thrashing back to what the VM had originally. Then try moving the disk file's connection from SATA to IDE.

Also see viewtopic.php?t=33356 old but may have some useful guidance. Also try a web search:
windows 7 native site:forums.virtualbox.org

[Cerilet]

I gather that you are dual-booting Mint and Windows 7 on your physical PC. And when booting to Mint, you're trying to run the physical Windows 7 as a VM.

Not exactly. I have dual boot in my PC, yes. But I want to convert the native Windows 7 into a VM so I can erase the physical SSD where it is installed and use it for other purposes.

Following your hint, I have booted the native W7 and discovered that the SSD is actually mounted in a SCSI controller (bus number 5, target ID0, LUN0, to be more precise).

I went back to Mint and tried all SCSI options (trying both SCSI Port 0 and 5):

• LsiLogic (Default SCSI)

• BusLogic (SCSI)

• LsiLogic SAS (SAS)

• even virtio-scsi, but no luck

However, using LsiLogic seems that something is different, because now, after getting the BSOD, it restarts and enters directly into the recovery mode. I would say now VirtualBox mounts the W7 image properly.

I tried again to do an automatic repair, but nothing. Also tried starting in safe mode and same result.

Any idea what might be failing?

Now I am doing another attempt to repair it using the W7 recovery disk.

Tomorrow I will go through viewtopic.php?t=33356 carefully and see if I manage that way.

Many thanks for your help @scottgus1!

[Cerilet]

No way I can get this working.

I also tried the sysprep.exe approach, the bootrec.exe, but no luck whatsoever.

So if anyone has a clue what might be happening, any hint would be highly appreciated.

Thanks and regards

[scottgus1]

I have no further ideas, but I do have an alternative, if you don't have any special licensed software in Windows 7: start over fresh in a new VM and a new Windows 7.