virtualbox.org

I have a Dell D830 that I installed Kubuntu (dual-boot with WinXP) and virtualbox on. I created a WinXP image from the Windows partition using a vmware utility. I recently discovered that the Windows partition no longer boots properly (BSOD.)

How can I use the virtualbox XP image to restore the Windows partition?

You need to prepare the XP installation for migration first. This page explains the steps you need to take. That page is talking about migrating to VBox, but in fact the issues are the same when moving XP images anywhere (unless the target is identical).

You are a bit vague on the "vmware tool" used. You ideally want a tool that completely images the drive, including the MBR. Imaging just the system partition is not enough. Ideally you would create the image to a shared folder mounted on a USB drive (personally I can never get direct use of USB to work reliably with VBox, but shared folders on removable drives work well).

It's likely that your XP image will need to be reactivated on the new hardware, as it is likely to have what MS consider significant hardware changes, e.g. to the MAC address.

If you want to restore the virtual image you created with the VMWare tool to your physical system, as restoring the backup to get your Windows going again, then you can do a few things. I'll explain one of them, as that's the only one that popped up in my head now.

On a working system, create a new VM and attach the VMW image to it. DON'T BOOT IT YET! Open the VM settings. For CDROM, you grab and select CloneZilla (or use your own preferred imaging tool for system images other than creating virtual hard drives). Attach a NIC to the VM and set it to NAT (bridged can be used to, as long as you have access to your network, use the IP addresses of the systems instead of their name).

Now you can boot the VM and select CD-ROM (should be first boot option, else use F12 to select it). CloneZilla will start and you can create an image of the VMW hard drive. Store it on a Samba share (normal windows share). There are lots of howto's on the web to use CloneZilla, refer to them, it's too extensive to list it here. Now when the image is done, burn the ISO of CloneZilla to a CD or DVD and restore the image you created to the broken Windows partition (again, refer to the howto's on the web).