Porting a (former) physikal XP

[MarkCranness]

Sorry, yes : 4 files. Have you tried unzipping to a new folder C:\HALu in the root of your guest's C: drive and tried it there?
HALu does not work if there are any space characters in the pathname of the folder it is run from.
So for example, 'C:\Documents and Settings\Mark\My Documents\HALu' would not work.

[Etepetete]

Did you configure the BIOS DMI data before starting your VM?

[ahznb]

Extract halacpi.dll, ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlpa.exe from %windowsroot%\Driver Cache\i386\sp3.cab to %windowsroot%\system32, then rename halacpi.dll to hal.dll. Reboot and let XP discover new ACPI hardware, it should show up as "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC".

[wkjlhjl]

@Mark that was the 1st issue (psace in path), which I solved, I did exactl what youre saying (unpacking to c:\HALu etc), without success - will try the other ideas now:

@ete: I didnt, your link doesnt tell what to configure there?! I have no problem regarding windows activation! - only changing the HAL doesnt work, so the VM OS is pretty slow

[wkjlhjl]

ahznb:
I did the rename/replace thing;

After XP Logo now I see Desktop/login for half a second , then VBox restarts (whether IO-APIC is activated or not)

[ahznb]

Boot your VM into safe-mode and disable automatic restart on system failure . You should be getting a BSOD. Whats it say?

BTW, these files are for 32-bit XP, non-APIC, ACPI, single processor VM, so make sure you have APIC off, ACPI on, one processor configured for your VM.

[ahznb]

If you're able to boot into safe-mode successfully, then go into Device Manager and check the "Computer" branch to see what type is installed. If it doesn't say "Advanced Config...(ACPI) PC", then try updating the driver to that. If you don't get that option when upgrading, go into Explorer and in folder %windowsroot%\system32, right click on files hal.dll, ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlpa.exe and select properties, then click on 'Internal name'. Only hal.dll should say "halacpi.dll", the other files should display the same name in 'internal name'. If not, then those files weren't copied. Maybe you have System Restore turned on, turn it off first.

To my knowledge though, if you're able to boot into safe-mode, than the reboots have nothing to do with your ACPI drivers.

[Etepetete]

The reason I suggested configuring the DMI BIOS data is because I also did a P2V and until I got the DMI BIOS data set correctly, the VM was running slow and showing other problems as well. Configuring the DMI BIOS data gives the OS within the VM the impression that it is still on the old machine. Unless you have a copy of the original VM before your first boot, I don't think configuring the DMI BIOS data now will help much, but you can give it a try. Here is some information that might help.