Could not read from bootable medium after Windows updates

[justinrpg]

I shut down a Windows XP Guest to let it install Microsoft Updates but when the Guest restarted I get the following error "Could Not Read From Bootable Medium" and it errors out with that EVERY TIME I start up the guest and now I cannot access the guest OS or ANY files on it!!! This never happened before until I installed these Windows Updates!!!

[squall leonhart]

Can't blame the updates.

[mpack]

Run a chkdsk on the host, otherwise you may have to restore from a backup. I doubt the updates could have caused disk errors.

[justinrpg]

now all I get on the Guest is a BSOD with "Unmountable Boot Volume"!!!

[stefan.becker]

Post details or forget it.

[justinrpg]

I don't know what to post! I start up the VM and at windows logo, the BSOD occurrs! I don't know what details you need!

[stefan.becker]

Hardware, host, vbox version, log file (VBOX Gui, select guest, right mouse button).

[justinrpg]

here is the log...

[mpack]

From the log file :

Code: Select all

00:00:36.533 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#0: disk read error (rc=VERR_EOF iSector=0x8fd08f cSectors=0x8)

I interpret the above line as meaning that it tried to read 8 sectors from LBA 0x8fd08f on the mounted drive - and encountered EOF (end of file), meaning that it was attempting to read from beyond the end of the image file. That would indicate severe corruption, either the block map contains garbage or the image has been truncated.

Corruption of this kind can happen in several ways, e.g. running out of space on the host partition, or unplugging the drive, or a crash or power cycle on the host PC... all while the image file was being written.

I note that the path to the drive image is "K:\Virtual Machines\melody1.vdi". If 'K' indicates a removable drive then that suggests one obvious way for the file to have become corrupted, i.e. unplugging the drive while the VM was working. I would also check how much space is available on that drive, since e.g. a thumb drive may have limited space.

The "why" is somewhat academic of course. It still looks like fixing it will require a backup copy.