virtualbox.org

Hi everyone,

I've been struggling to make a USB SSD HDD a bootable window XP HDD. I gave it up as a real windows XP HDD, and now am trying it with VirtualBox. What I have to begin with are:

- Lenovo T510 laptop with Intel 200GB internal SSD HDD preloaded with windows 7
- Samsung 64GB in Patriot memory Gauntlet II USB 3.0 HDD enclosure
- Windows XP SP2 retail installation CD

I followed the instructions in Howto section of the forum, and every trial with different parameters or settings ended up crashing when winXP installer tries to format the Samsung SSD drive over USB. Obviously, I can format it on windows 7, but somehow winXP installer doesn't recognize the valid partition, and try to format it every time.
I tried both direct access of the Samsung SSD using VBamage command line, .VDI file on Samsung SSD drive, and even .VDI file on Intel internal SSD. Every trial ended up crashing at disc format, and this led me to think that accessing the HDD is a problem. If a virtual disc is used, I suppose the winXP installer running on the guest would actually communicate with virtual HDD driver, so shouldn't be a problem, but I now suspect that the ICHR8M driver the guide instructed me to use may not be a correct one.

I couldn't find authentic information which ICH version is used yet, but the guide is pretty old and my H/W may not go well with the SATA driver instruction in the guide. I tried other drivers not used in the guide, and I got the blue screen crash within the guest VM. When I used the recommended driver, I got crash popup window with meditating guru icon instead.
I also tried to find equivalent driver of lenovo T510, but what I found on Lenovo site has everything included in self-installing .exe, so couldn't find the needed part.

I am looking forward to your kind helps on this. Thank you in advance, and for reading this so far.

I think you have been using the wrong "howto". You don't need SATA support.

Just create a VM in the normal way, a full install to a VM located on the hdd default folder, then relocate that VM onto the SSD. The SSD should be wiped first. To relocate a VM created using VirtualBox v4.x the current procedure is :-

1. With VirtualBox shut down, copy the VM containing folder to the SSD. The folder will be called <vmname>.
2. Run Vbox, right click the VM and "Remove". Keep the physical files when asked (this can be deleted once the relocated version is tested).
3. Shut down VBox, wait 30 seconds.
4. Navigate to the VM folder on the SSD and double click the ".vbox" file.

Note that running VMs from a USB portable drive on a Windows host is fraught with problems. USB is slow, and drive letters can change, messing up the VM paths.

Hi mpack,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am trying as you suggested. So what I am doing now are:

1. Create a VM with only IDE controller
2. Add CD drive using the host D: drive
3. Add a normal .VDI disk under internal drive C:
4. Start up the VM and boot with XP SP2 CD

Last question is, as you said running VM from USB HDD could be problematic, so I wonder if it's any better to create a .VMDK file that gives VM direct access. Could you give me answers to these questions? Thank you.

jheoaustin wrote:I wonder if it's any better to create a .VMDK file that gives VM direct access

No, that would not address either of the problems mentioned. It would only add further complications.

Hi mpack,

Thank you again for quick reply. The result with my steps in my previous support didn't work well for even .VDI in the internal drive. It went into 'guru meditation state' as usual.
I have to think either I have an underlying installation problem with VirtualBox, or my windows XP SP2 CD is not friendly with VirtualBox. Could you tell me what to check to see if I have either kind of problems? The log is also attached for your review.

Install VirtualBox 4.1.10 and see if it works better.

Also check this out
anything Google chrome? http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 184dec89ff

Thank you for continuing helps from the moderators here.

I tried 4.1.10, but it seems to behave the same way. I also tried different IDE controller types, but no difference other than the slight timing of crash. Looking at the linked article, I got an idea even though I don't have the google crash handler program. So, I disabled the virus protection, but it didn't make a behavioral difference. Please let me know if you have any suggestion, solution, correction or anything. Thank you.

Take a look at the log yourself and confirm that the error is still host memory low, similar to the bit Perry quoted?

If yes, then next I would look at the task list as you are about to run the VM. Who are the significant memory hogs in that list?

Hi,

I tried the start-over from the beginning with a new VM created as default. The behavior is still the same, and at the end, it's the host memory low error. My T510 has 6GB physical memory, and I tried 3/1.5GB allocation to VM, and both had the same problem. I am trying to install windows XP SP2, and on the real machine(windows 7) I tried to minimize the memory use by host side by closing all applications except VM. I will keep investigating, and meanwhile, please let me know if you can think of anything worth to look at. Thank you again for your helps.

I can pretty much guarantee that there must be something running on the host that is keeping VirtualBox from allocating and locking the memory. You need to find out what it is. Sorry to say this is not something that anyone can do remotely. Set the memory to no more than 1GB and see if it will allow you to continue, but to use more you must find out what is causing the memory issue.

Just out of curiosity I create a new test XP image using just the defaults and changing nothing in the settings apart from mounting my XP CD image.
Default memory is 192Mb
All went as I expected it would. XP installed and ran with no issues
Ran another test exactly the same as above apart from this time using an actual XP CD
Same results.
Why don't you try the same?
My current host is running Win7 Pro 64bit.
I've never had any issues with any version of Vbox and XP on any PC/Laptop/OS. This is a strange one.

I finally got some help from an IT guy, and 2 differences his way from mine are:

1. select the bridged network adaptor - he didn't think it made a difference.
2. choose .VMDK format

The size was 10GB, dynamically allocated, and I was able to format it, copy the files to windows, and went through a reboot. I am not sure what kept me from progressing, but now I appear to be in a good shape. Thank you very much for all your kind helps.

Faced the exact same problem here Win 7 Enterprise x64 and VirtualBox 4.1.10

First tried .WDMK format and then the Win XP SP2 install came a bit further.
Second I changed to Bridged and now the installation starts without any problems.

So there is definitely a problem with this mix.

Same problem here with Windows XP SP3 image, and it was solved by using a VMDK file system in place of a VDI one.

VMDK is not a filesystem, it's just a container. It makes as much difference as choosing Toshiba vs Western Digital for your physical disk drive - but people will insist on seeing patterns that aren't there.

VDI is the native virtual disk format in VirtualBox - it definitely works.