virtualbox.org

I have converted 3 existing physical XP machines to VM and while 2 work great I am struggling with the third.
Looks like the BIOS loads but then the machine hangs (will not start in safe mode either).

I suspect that XP is not seeing the drive. This physical machine had its HDD replaced with an SDD could this be the problem? I have tried every combination of storage controller with no luck.

I am running VB 4.1.8 and used VMware Convertor 4.30 which worked fine with my other machines.

Apologies if this is a real n00b question

We would need precise symptoms / error messages before commenting much further. "Not seeing the drive" would not cause a hang: you would instead get the "no bootable medium found" message from the virtual BIOS. A hang is usually caused by the bootstrap loading code for the wrong hardware. E.g. code that depends on the IO APIC being set the other way.

Thank you for coming back to me, I am new to this and I really do appreciate your patience.

When I first start the machine, it says "running" in the title bar but I just get a black screen. I wait for a long time and then power off. When I power on again I get the "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this....." I then try to start in safe mode (or start normally) but the screen just freezes.

Am I allowed to post the log file here?

Thank you again for your help

Mike

Mike2012 wrote:When I first start the machine, it says "running" in the title bar but I just get a black screen. I wait for a long time and then power off.

That sounds like the "IO APIC" problem I mentioned earlier. Go into the VM settings, System section, Motherboard tab, whatever IO APIC is set to now, set it the other way.

When reporting a VirtualBox problem yes we do encourage people to provide the log file (preferably as a zipped attachment). However in this case you have a problem with the guest OS, not with VirtualBox, so the VBox log will show nothing amiss.

Thanks mpack. Tried this and it feels like i am making some progress. The machine boots and windows starts to load but now I get a blue screen message "a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer", it then goes in to a cycle of rebooting. Should i change IO APIC back (to unchecked)?

Mike2012 wrote:Should i change IO APIC back (to unchecked)?

No, it's clearly now on the correct setting. What you have now sounds like what you get when XP has been migrated incorrectly. You should have followed the advice here to prepare the XP installation for migration. Ideally you should go back and do that now. Following the instructions for the first few paragraphs, but when you get to the "Step by Step instructions" ignore it (it's obsolete and Linux specific), instead do what you did before - and remember the correct IO APIC setting from the first attempt.

Thank you for all of your help, everything finally working. I did follow the guide, (had to disable both agp440 and intelppm) but still getting BSOD. Finally I used my XP disk to boot the image, repaired the VM OS and was able to boot properly (at last)

Thank you very much for your help here, I could not have done it without you.

Best

Mike