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Hi. I'm new to VirtualBox and have a question I cannot find the answer to. Forgive me if this has already been addressed. I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction to find the information I need.

I have existing virtual PCs that were created using MS Virtual PC 2007 and Windows Virtual PC (formerly Virtual PC 7). The virtual hard drives containing the installed OS have the .vhd file extension. The VirtualBox User Manual says VirtualBox provides full support to .vhd virtual hard drives. But, when I try to create a new virtual PC in VirtualBox using the existing VHD, they will not boot and I get various warnings and screens that say the OS is corrupted. Most frequently, I see a screen that says I need to boot the installation media and run repair mode. When I try to boot the virtual machines in Windows Virtual PC, the boot and run fine.

Is there some special way to create VirtualBox virtual PCs using existing VHDs?

Thank you.

The settings must match as close as possible. Several things that will cause you issues are VT-x/AMD-v and IO APIC being on if the guest was 32 bit in VPC.
Other can be PIIX3 instead of PIIX4 or the other way around. Also if you installed the VPC additions they will cause issues in VirtualBox and should be removed in VPC before you try to use them in VBox.

The guest OSs are, in fact, 32-bit since the Windows VPC products do not support running VPCs with 64-bit OSs. Unless, of course, your host OS is Win Server 2008 Enterprise or Datacenter.

When you say the settings must be as close as possible, I assume you mean RAM, NIC(s), etc, correct? What about the video RAM that Windows VPC does not allow you to manually set? Could that be an issue?

The MS VPC products also do not appear to offer options for the drive controller type. So, I guess just experiment to see what works?

Thanks, again.

That's what I do. BUT! Make sure that you never turn on IO APIC or Windows will try to install the multi processor kernel and you will have a mess on your hands.

tstyren wrote:Hi. I'm new to VirtualBox and have a question I cannot find the answer to. Forgive me if this has already been addressed. I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction to find the information I need.

I have existing virtual PCs that were created using MS Virtual PC 2007 and Windows Virtual PC (formerly Virtual PC 7). The virtual hard drives containing the installed OS have the .vhd file extension. The VirtualBox User Manual says VirtualBox provides full support to .vhd virtual hard drives. But, when I try to create a new virtual PC in VirtualBox using the existing VHD, they will not boot and I get various warnings and screens that say the OS is corrupted. Most frequently, I see a screen that says I need to boot the installation media and run repair mode. When I try to boot the virtual machines in Windows Virtual PC, the boot and run fine.

Is there some special way to create VirtualBox virtual PCs using existing VHDs?

Thank you.

Support for the .vhd format does not imply that you can simply create a vm using the existing .vhd file and boot it. All it means is that VirtualBox will recognize a .vhd file as a virtual hard disk. What you are doing is similar to pulling the hard disk out of one physical machine and putting it in a totally different physical machine. In both cases it is unlikely to boot because of "hardware" differences. It will not have the correct drivers for the hardware it sees. If they are too different you will need to do a repair install of the OS to fix the driver issues (whether physical or virtual).

Also note Perry's warning on removing the VMAdditions before you move to VirtualBox. These are VPC-specific (just as VMTools are VMWare specific and so on).

That (unfortunately) clarifies things and makes sense. After numerous attempts, I am unable to create a VirtualBox VM using an existing Windows VPC VHD.

Let me explain what I'm trying to do, because I know it seems crazy. I'm an IT student at a technical college. For our MCITP classes, and several others, we've been using MS VPC 2007 and MS VPC 7. A lab activity in one class specifically calls for using VirtualBox to install a Ubuntu VM, which turned out to be easier than doing it in Win VPC. I like VirtualBox better than Win VPC, but Im still learning how to use it. It seems to have a lot of the functionality of VMWare, but is free. So, I had the (not so) brilliant idea of trying to convert all of our VPC VMs to VirtualBox VMs, rather than having to create them all from scratch (although I could do that if necessary. I just need the initial VM OS configs from the Instructors).

If VirtualBox "recognizes" Win VPC VHDs, is it possible to create a fresh Windows VM in VirtualBox, connect the VHD as a virtual slave drive, create another VirtualBox virtual slave drive (VDI), and clone the VHD to the VDI, then use the newly-cloned VDI as the virtual master drive in a new VirtualBox VM? Like this:

1. Create VirtualBox VM using Win (fill in the blank) as the virtual client OS (VDI master).
2. Create a VirtualBox virtual slave drive (VDI slave).
3. Attach Win VPC virtual drive as a slave drive (VHD slave).
4. Clone the VHD slave to the VDI slave from within VirtualBox.
5. Create a new VirtualBox VM using the cloned VDI slave as the new VM's VDI master.

Thanks for your patience and assistance.

I just had this same problem and was able to resolve it. The new VM wizard created my VHD as a SATA drive. Changing it to a IDE drive resolved the issue.