Lost Data

[Middge]

Recently, I lost the system drive on one of my computers. On that system drive was my Windows 7 x64 OS (Host OS), and my user profile. Fortunately, I had the .vdi files for my virtual machine stored on another drive.

I bought a new drive, reinstalled the OS and installed the latest version of VirtualBox (4.0.10). I created a new VM and attached the drives that were attached to my old guest VM. (Windows 2008 R2 Guest OS). Now I am getting blue screens every time I try and boot up the VM. What should I do? I really cannot afford to lose this VM in its current state.

Blue screen code is as follows;

0x0000007B (0x0000007B (0xFFFFF880009A9928, 0xFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000)

[Martin]

Stop 7B is "no boot device found". You probably have configured a different chipset (PIX3/PIX4/ICH6) for disk controller.

[Middge]

That was my first thought as well. Unfortunately I tried all the different types and it still blue screened. I even attached the disks as IDE and it still failed

[mpack]

Perhaps you should pop the Win2k8 setup CD in and do a "repair installation".

[Middge]

I tried that. There is nothing wrong with the boot sector or anything like that, and I can't perform a restore because there are no restore points to use. I can't do an in place upgrade because it requires me to be able to boot into Windows. I am at a loss. From what I remember reading from the FAQ on this site, I was supposed to get a Machine ID in an XML file and import it into the new installation of Virtual Box on the new host. Unfortunately I was not able to get this data.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can get past this?

[mpack]

"Repair installation" from the setup CD is not for fixing a broken boot sector. It's basically an OS reinstall, except not from scratch (e.g. all installed apps are retained, but drivers and HAL will be for the new VM).

I'm somewhat surprised you didn't know this, if you tried it already.

The wrong machine ID in a VM will not cause your symptoms. Your symptoms are caused by a hardware change, usually a change in the IDE controller type.

A system restore point, even if you had one, is the opposite of what you need. You need to adapt the OS for your VM as it is now, not for how it was some time in the past.

[Middge]

It is actually no longer possible to do what you are thinking mpack. Microsoft changed it so you can't simply load a new OS over an existing one while retaining settings (unless there is another way to do it that I don't know about). The only way to do this now a days is an in place upgrade, but to do that you must be able to boot into the OS.

Again, any help from you guys would be incredibly appreciated. Also, thanks for the time you've invested so far in this!