No bootable Medium found,System Halted error

[SarbajitM]

Hi,
Whenever I'm starting the VM application I'm getting a popup stating that one or media is inaccessible.Opening the media manager showing that the harddisk file (.VDI) that I've created(NewHarddisk1.vdi) exist there along with a copy with the same name.The Copy version is inaccessible.When I'm trying to start the machine attached with NewHardisk1.vdi I'm getting the error message mentioned in the subject line.Looking for help to get rid of it.

[mpack]

Looks like you have two problems. Inaccessible disk and not-bootable disk.

The error message means what it says: NewHardDisk1.vdi does not contain a bootable operating system, nor does any other disk attached to the VM. That's one problem, and I suspect it may be a result of you attempting the fix the other problem.

On the inaccessible disk problem, do you use snapshots? Have you been copying VDI files around between folders?

[SarbajitM]

Hi mpack,
Its true that I've tried to fix the inaccessible disk problem by means of the solution I've found by Google Search.But I've not tried to move the VDI file around different folders.Yes the Hard Disk contains Snapshot.

Regards,
SarbajitM

[mpack]

If you use snapshots then data is spread across multiple files fragments with no redundancy, the individual files are not independant and cannot be usefully copied around by themselves. If you try it you'll encounter a variety of problems, ranging from total failure of VBox to accept the result, to lost data, which might also mean losing the ability to boot from the drive.

You may have had an original error that sent you down this path, but so far you haven't provided enough data for me to guess what that error might be or how to fix it.

[SarbajitM]

Hi,

When I’m opening the media manager I’m getting this error.



Content of the External Hard Disk(I:) but in the above it is showing “could not open the medium G:\...... “, not able to understand ExtHDD is I: drive while VM is not getting G:\NewHardDisk1.vdi.




But in my C: drive another NewHardDisk1.vdi also exist.



List of snapshots stored in my machine within machine WinXP.



And this snapshots are attached with the inaccessible HardDisk.



VM Version I'm using 3.2.8

Hope that the above images help you to get the proper scenario.

[mpack]

I think you have been the victim of a Windows "feature": drive letters of external drives are not fixed. Clearly, you once had a VDI file on a G: drive, called "NewHardDisk.vdi" and you mounted it in that VM. At some point you had two external drives plugged in at once, which caused Windows to change the drive letter assignments.

You should just be able to go into File | Virtual Media Manager and "Release" the "G:\NewHardDisk.vdi" file.

I'm not sure why you get multiple "NewHardDisk.vdi" files. That looks like a default name, but I don't know the circumstances in which that default is used (it isnt during VM creation using the GUI wizard, as the disk then is given the same name as the VM). Another possibility is that at some point you decided to clone the file off the external drive to an internal drive copy - then you registered the copy. I can't tell from here if they both have the same UUID.

[SarbajitM]

Hi mpack,
I have fixed it.............. Right Clicking on My Computer gives you an option 'Manage'. From there you can go to the 'Disk Management'. From there you can set/change the Drive Letter.I changed the usb drive to 'G:'.Before doing all these,I've removed one of the Snapshot from Media Manager to make the machine accessible.But still after that when I was trying to run the machine,I was getting an popup stating 'G:/NewhardDisk1.vdi' not found.Then after I change the drive letter and had found that I've fixed it

Regards,
Sarbajit.