virtualbox.org

Hi everyone,
I may have goofed up the current state on one of my VMs.

Let me give you a little background. Lately my XP VM box has been messaging me to that I'm running out of HD Space. So, I started Tinkering around the VM Interface for a way to increase disk space.

I figured there would be some setting somewhere that would increase it. While I tinkered around I 'released' my vm drive and then realized I was wrong. I can't increase it that way. So I reattached the drive to my machine. When I restarted the machine I found that my current state got lost and the machine was booting up like my very last snapshot. I didn't realize that I'd lose my current state (and losing about a months work).

I searched through the directory structure and I found the file that appears to be the 'current state' that I would want to bring back. My question to all of you is... can I bring back that current state? and if so, how?

Marvin

What you found is indeed the current state. Everything that you have done after you created the snapshot is stored in that file. Have you tried to attach the snapshot file to the media manager?

no I haven't tried to attach that snapshot file to the media manager... I don't know how... Would you be able to lead me in the right direction?

Marvin

The only easy solution I know is to clone the current state VDI. When you do that the software will in fact merge that VDI with all its ancestor files, creating a flattened VDI which you can mount in a new VM - mounting in the old VM is tricky because it still has a memory of snapshots. With an XP guest creating a new VM is the easiest option - but make sure that IDE controller type, IO APIC setting and MAC address are the same as the old VM, otherwise XP will give you BSODs or activation problems.

Once you are happy that the new VM is stable you can delete the old VM and all the old snapshot fragments.