Low Memory+Ignorance=Inaccessible, ERROR, etc.

[rujohnson]

First: I'm an ad person, not a computer person. Not a Luddite, but not very techy either. A 20-year Mac User who is forced to run Windows XP via Virtual Box so that I can run QuickBooks so that my bookkeeper and I can swap files.

I use Virtual Box maybe twice a month for as little time as possible because I'd rather do anything than bookkeeping.

Yesterday I was running the next-to-newest version of VirtualBox to do books. I must have had too many applications open and too much on my hard drive because I got a message about low memory. When I tried to shut down VirtualBox I got this message:
The selected virtual machine is inaccessible. Please inspect the error message shown below and press the Refresh button if you want to repeat the accessibility check:
Hard disk '/Users/rjohnson/Library/VirtualBox/Machines/Windows XP/Snapshots/{b79e3bcb-c707-44d2-b903-7170c99a62e8}.vdi' with UUID {b79e3bcb-c707-44d2-b903-7170c99a62e8} cannot be directly attached to the virtual machine 'Windows XP' ('/Users/rjohnson/Library/VirtualBox/Machines/Windows XP/Windows XP.xml') because it has 1 differencing child hard disks.
Result Code:
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component:
Machine
Interface:
IMachine {6d9212cb-a5c0-48b7-bbc1-3fa2ba2ee6d2}

I thought that maybe I should install the newest version of VirtualBox 3.2.10. So I did. Same error message comes up.

I've read through the FAQs and a lot of the Forum topics, but can't find anything close enough to this problem to help me.

I opened the VirtualBox log and learned that one thing I know less about than bookkeeping is computer logs.

I'm lost and don't know what to do next. I would greatly appreciate some advice and direction. I'm slow, but teachable when it comes to computer issues. Thanks in advance.

[Perryg]

Do you have a backup of the files (data)?
Do you know if the Windows.vdi file is still on the PC?
From the sounds of it you have blown out a snapshot. Not a good thing. You might be able to get the base back and if you have other snapshots you may be able to recover to the last good snapshot, but you need to go slow and tell us what is going on before you do anything else.

[rujohnson]

**sigh** This has been my week to screw up.

I forgot to say I was trying to delete an old snapshot when the problem started. I made a new snapshot just before the problem started.

I have an automatic daily back-up in place and also use Carbonite, so I should be able to pull up files. I just have no idea how to do so. I also have a separate backup of the QuickBooks data, so I'm not freaked out about that.

Where would I look for the Windows.vdi file? It didn't come up when I did a search. Would looking at the log help you? I could copy and paste the info.

I really appreciate your help. And I am totally ready to go s-l-o-w.