What happened to my BIOS?

[johnL]

Yesterday I installed VBox 4.2.4 along with the appropriate extension pack. My host is Win7 Home Premium and my guest is XP Pro. I didn't really have any problems to speak of; I installed the guest additions, installed a Canon scanner driver into the guest (One of the reasons I installed VB is this scanner driver won't run on Win7.) and just played around with getting acquainted with things.

Today when I tried to boot up the PC, I got a "boot record error." I power cycled, went into the boot menu, where all my drives were displayed correctly, chose the boot HD, and everything came up fine. I restarted the PC and again got the boot record error so I went into BIOS setup and none of my drives (HD or DVD) are displayed correctly. There are no names of the specific drives, and in the boot order it shows that it has an IDE CD-ROM (doesn't show the name) but it doesn't show any of the SATA HD's or the SATA DVD.

What I've found is that from the boot-up screen where it gives the option to go into setup or boot menu, I can go to either one of those and then come out again without making any changes and Windows 7 boots up normally and everything runs fine. But I have to do that or the machine just sits and says "boot record error. Press a key."

I've added drives to any machine I've ever had and the BIOS just recognizes them with no input from me so I'm very confused why it doesn't see any of my SATA devices.

Any ideas, anyone?
Thanks

[johnL]

It's still not fixed, but I've learned some things:
There actually was a small (I thought) glitch in the installation process; VB wanted to install in the C: partition, which is on HDD1. I wanted to install it on HDD0, which is a data disk. There is a browse button for choosing a different installation location, so I tried to put VB on HDD0, but the installation was having a problem (progress bar wasn't progressing) so I went back and allowed the installation in the default location.
Today I found that if I disconnect HDD0, the PC will boot normally. With HDD0 connected, all kinds of weird things happen, such as: The BIOS won't recognize HDD0. Or it will recognize both HDDs but gets the boot order wrong. (I corrected that but it didn't fix the problem; the next reboot failed and when I went back into BIOS, it again didn't recognize HDD0.) Sometimes the machine won't boot. Sometimes it will boot after a very long time, during which (from the sounds) the system is trying recognize HDD0. But anytime I go into BIOS (even if I don't change anything), it boots normally after I exit, even with HDD0 connected; it's only when I try to boot without going into BIOS that the boot fails.
I used Partition Wizard to do a MBR repair, but that didn't change anything.
So somehow trying to install VB into HDD0 screwed it up. Does anybody have any idea how to fix it?
Thanks

[mpack]

This has nothing to do with VirtualBox. No application, buggy or not, can touch the boot record on your hosts hard disk. At least not unless it's an intentionally written trojan, and I assume that is not your accusation. Just because VirtualBox was the last thing you were doing when you noticed the problem does not establish cause and effect. If I was you I would start running disk checks and/or seek out expert help locally.

[johnL]

No, of course I'm not making any accusation, s**t happens.

However... HDD0 works fine> Try to install VBox on HDD0> Installation fails> HDD0 no longer works

ANY logical person is going to assume there's a connection. ANY logical person.

I'm just stating what happened and asking for help. Saying "It's not our fault" is not help.

[BillG]

No, of course I'm not making any accusation, s**t happens.

However... HDD0 works fine> Try to install VBox on HDD0> Installation fails> HDD0 no longer works

ANY logical person is going to assume there's a connection. ANY logical person.

I'm just stating what happened and asking for help. Saying "It's not our fault" is not help.

That is not the point. There is no point asking about this in a VirtualBox forum because there is no possible way that installing VirtualBox had anything to do with your problem. If installing VirtualBox caused problems like that, this forum would be full of complaints about it.

It is not a matter of saying "it is not our fault". Most of us are not in any way linked to Oracle and are not involved in its development. We are users who enjoy helping other users if we can.

There is no doubt that you have a major problem, but our experience with using VirtualBox is no t going to help. If your BIOS is corrupt you need to talk to someone with computer hardware know-how.

In addition, the fact that VirtualBox would not install on HHD0 suggests to me that the corruption already existed when you tried the install. VirtualBox cannot have any effect on your system before it is installed. What you are running at this stage is the Windows installer, not VirtualBox.