virtualbox.org

I have just reinstalled my openSuse system and VirtualBox 3.0.4, and I've got my virtual XP machine working again. However, there are a lot of snapshots / virtual hard discs that I no longer want - they take up space and I'd like to release it. However, I've made some changes to my XP installation, which I need to keep. How do I get rid of my extra snapshots / hard discs whilst retaining the system at its current configuration?

Do I take a new snapshot and then get rid of all the other ones? Do I need to use the console window to delete the old hard disks?

I've spent quite a bit of time getting everything working nicely again after some serious issues over the weekend (not VB-related!), so I hope that what I want is acahievable without much pain...

It can be done. Open VB and select the VM. Now on the right side, select the second tab called Snapshots. There you can 'revert' the snapshots, merging the data with the parent snapshot. Do this for each entry and it should eventually clean up the list of snapshots until you're left with only one state. You might need to discard a snapshot after reverting one.
As with all possible dangerous operations, creating a backup is essential, especially in this case as something could happen that cause you to loose the VM changes you want to keep.

Discarding/merging/reverting snapshots is the most confusing part of the VB GUI for me. 2 days ago, even after using VB for almost 1.5 years, I screwed up and discarded changes I had made to a VM that I wanted to keep. I was only trying to merge them in with the previous snapshot.

I hope someday soon the wording on this will be made clearer.