virtualbox.org

Hi,

I have created a VHD through Win 7 Disk management. I use this image to dual boot but also want the flexability of using it within VB. However, when I try and run it within VB, I get the following error message:

Fatal: INT18: Boot failure.

Are there any ways around this? Anyone encountered this before?

Many thanks,

I think the error means that a bootable MBR was found, but none of the partitions are marked as bootable. That would be the case if the VHD partition was intended to be booted by a boot manager stored on another drive. You would have to use a partition manager to review the partitions and mark one as bootable - after of course making sure that it's intended to be bootable.

Also be aware that a Win7 image will see a virtual machine as different hardware, and will ask to be reactivated - which will invalidate any previous activations.

OK, I can take a look at the partitions and ensure that one of them is bootable.

The validation thing is fine, actually it would be more beneficial for my purposes if it did ask for re activation!

Thanks, will post back if that helped fix it.

I tried to use Partition Wizard, but it was unable to recognise the VHD. I'm not convinced this is the root problem here. The VHD boots fine when added to the BCDStore of the host machine, surely that means the correct partition is marked for boot.

I read other places that the image is maybe missing 'markers' that are required for VB to see it as a bootable image? Is there a way of adding whatever it is that's missing to the VHD?

CompSupp wrote:I read other places that the image is maybe missing 'markers' that are required for VB to see it as a bootable image? Is there a way of adding whatever it is that's missing to the VHD?

Not sure what "markers" you're talking about. There must be a proper signature at the end of the MBR and the MBR has to contain boot code. If that is true, the MBR is loaded and executed and everything else is up to the MBR and the disk contents.

For diagnostics you can try looking at the VHD using CloneVDI (see sticky at top of forum). If you use the sector viewer to check sector 0 you should see lots of non-zero stuff, and the last two bytes should be "55 aa".
If you click "View as MBR" then it should show you the partition map, at least one entry should be non-zero, and exactly one should be marked bootable. If you note the sector where the bootable partition starts then you can use "Go to sector" to jump to that sector. Again you should find a sector which is largely non-zero with the last two bytes "55 aa".

If all of the above is true then the disk should be bootable (in the sense that you won't get that error message). If it isn't then it won't.