Win7 image fails to boot on virtualbox

[Zouleous]

I have an interesting situation I'm trying to tackle. I recently installed the RTM version of Windows 7 since I was running RC and it's about to expire. Before I reinstalled I took a full image of my Windows partition using imagex capturing it as a .wim file. My second partition holds another Windows OS which I can dual boot to.

After installing Windows 7 RTM I realized I forgot to backup a database off my old install. What I'm trying to do is apply the backup image to a virtual machine so I can recover the database. It was all good until after I applied the image it wouldn't boot. I was getting a message saying missing bootmgr. So I then ran through fixing the boot using the startup Recovery utility on the Windows 7 disc. When that didn't fix it I ran through the instructions detailed here Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

Well it's still not booting. At this point it gets a blue screen that flies by so fast it's hard to see the error. I believe it's saying the stop code is 7B which basically refers to it's inability to find the boot device. I'm wondering if my problem is now because it's trying to boot using a SATA controller that doesn't exist in the virtual machine. If the image was sysprepp'd ahead of time then this probably wouldn't be a problem, but I wasn't thinking to sysprep it since I wasn't going to deploy the image.

Any thoughts? And if this is the actual problem does anyone know how to fix it? I realize I could just reapply the image to my physical machine, recover the database, and then reinstall RTM. I'm using this as a learning experience though to see if this is possible for machines that I capture a backup image of. Any thoughts/help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Zouleous]

To be clear, I'm wondering if there is a way to either generalize the image offline or alter the image so it's not trying to boot to hardware that doesn't exist in virtualbox. Unless I'm on the wrong track...maybe there is something else going on.

[Zouleous]

Heh...I've been thinking about this all day and right after I made this post I had an idea. I figured out how to make it work. It was in fact that Windows was trying to boot to a controller that didn't exist. I went in to virtualbox and had it simulate the ICH6 IDE controller and that fixed it. Sorry for the post, but maybe it will help someone else.

[Zouleous]

Actually I would still be interested in knowing if it's possible to alter a Windows installation offline so it would boot to another controller. I was fortunate that virtualbox can simulate the right controller and allow it to boot. I would still like to know if it's possible on other systems where this might not apply. Thanks again.