Guest will install but 2nd or 3rd restart it's inorperable

[amakahikihau]

I have installed Win xp and or win 2k, vista or 7 individually or in some combination. After restarting the computer, sometimes once or the third or tenth time, the guest will not run at all. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 and virtual box 3.1.2. I keep the machine state when I have to shut down the guest and that is usually only when I have to shut the computer dow to install updates to Ubuntu. Any suggestions? Sam.

[vbox4me2]

Explain what you mean with 'does not start'.

[amakahikihau]

By not start, I mean that the guest OS still shows in the left hand column but when I click on start I get the message that the OS is not there.

[Perryg]

Does this happen to all the virtual machines or just the XP?
Where are you installing the guests VDI file. Is it on an external USB device?

[amakahikihau]

The problem happens to all the guests Win2k, xp, vista and 7. Everything is on the hard drive. Thanks, Sam

[Perryg]

If when this happens can you look at the /home/<username>/.VirtualBox/HardDisks folder and is the VDI file still there? What about the Machines folder is it still there as well, and is the VM still listed? Does the VirtualBox.xml file still have the entries for the VMs
Also you say the hard drive, is it the primary drive or a secondary drive?

[vbox4me2]

You might have a failty disk, run some checks on it.