virtualbox.org

I downloaded and installed VirtualBox on my Vista laptop so I could install Ubuntu Jaunty. I've used other recent versions of VirtualBox on my Ubuntu machine so I can run Windows XP and I never had a problem with it. But now with the Vista host and Ubuntu guest...

Basically while I was trying to figure out how to mount an SD card into the virtual machine the VirtualBox GUI crashed. Nothing too strange, this is Vista afterall, so I got the pop up window asking me to close the program, which I did. Then when I went to restart VirtualBox the virtual machine was just gone - as if I just installed it and have yet to install a guest OS. I can't remember where it saved the harddrive file so I can't even check if that still exists.

Any ideas why this may have happened? I'm kind of hesitant to go through the whole process of remaking the virtual machine, installing Ubuntu, downloading and installing all the updates and then installing the Guest Additions (which put together took somewhere around 2+ hrs). At least, not until I find out why this happened.

The 'why' I can't answer, but I can answer the 'where'. The configuration files and hard drives are stored in your profile folder. Open Explorer and enter %userprofile% in the address bar. You should see a folder called .VirtualBox. If you don't see it, you might need to navigate to a different folder, like AppData\Local.

I found the folder, only file in there is a "VirtualBox.xml" file. Sadly no harddrive...

that file (virtualbox control file) should be in your profile folder. Look at the C:\program files\sun\.....for the (machine name).vdi, but it sounds to me like it will be corrupt even if it is there.

Huh, since when does VB save the VM's in the install folder where it doesn't have write permissions by default on Vista instead of the user profile folder where it does have write permissions?

Rook, have you tried using the system search function?

Since Vista?? I don't know but when ever I install and forget to tell it where I want it to install it always puts the darned things in a folder (mine is VDI) in the path I said. I have mine set to a second drive but that is not the default.
I just had to deal with this on the boys computers a day before yesterday and it was that way as well.

Even now the virtualbox.xml is in a folder .virtualbox under my profile name, and the rest of the files where I tell it to put them.

Edit:

Forget what I said earlier, apparently the search didn't include certain folders. The .vdi file is still there. I tried making a new machine and using the same file as the harddrive. Then I got this error message:

Failed to open the hard disk <pathname>\.VirtualBox\HardDisks\Ubuntu Jaunty.vdi

Could not save the settings file '<pathname>\.VirtualBox\VirtualBox.xml'
(VERR_ACCESS_DENIED).

Under the Details section I get the following:
Result Code: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80BB0004)
Component: VirtualBox
Interface: IVirtualBox {3f4ab53a-199b-4526-a91a-93ff62e456b8}

No clue if that helps anyone figure out what happened in the first place. But there you go.