virtualbox.org

VB will not open - error message is

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows XP.
Unsupported version 13 of data unit 'pgm' (instance #1, pass 0xffffffff) (VERR_SSM_UNSUPPORTED_DATA_UNIT_VERSION).

Help! What have I done/what do I need to do??

Thanks

Did you update VirtualBox while your VM was in a saved state?

Yes I did - which obviously was the wrong thing to do?

No need to put the question mark at the end of your sentence. Yes, it was the wrong thing to do!

It's like leaving your computer running while you swap out the motherboard.

You have two choices at this point. One is to revert back to 3.2.12 and see if you can shut down the VM properly before updating again. The other is you can discard the saved state and see if the VM will boot (you will lose any changes you've made since the last time you shut down the VM).
In both cases I recommend making a backup first, just in case.

Thanks very much - the discard option has restored the programme.

rpmurray wrote:No need to put the question mark at the end of your sentence. Yes, it was the wrong thing to do!

It's like leaving your computer running while you swap out the motherboard.

It's funny how something that seems totally unacceptable to me (not being able to open a saved state from a recently updated VirtualBox application) seems not only acceptable but expected by other people.
Too bad for everyone who uses the VirtualBox saved states as backups.
I don't recall any warnings not to perform an application update when I clicked on the "Save State" button.
Call me nutty but I would have expected the "feature" of being able to load/convert saved images of any prior version a requirement before a new application version is deemed releasable.

mungoman wrote:Too bad for everyone who uses the VirtualBox saved states as backups

"Too bad" is right. Evolution soon takes care of mistakes like that, we probably shouldn't interfere.