Basic Import/Export Appliance question

[drDubbelklick]

Hello folks,

I did an "Export Appliance" of a Virtual Machine running a licensed XP Professional English version. My host operating system is Windows 7 64 bit with 8 GB RAM. The operating system on the old laptop is Vista home Premium 32-bit, 3GB.
It works smoothly in my new laptop, but when the export appliance was complete, it took several minutes, I copied the result VDI file to a USB stick, then went to my other laptop and copied it to c:\temp.
After some correction I had to make, like memory available (the new laptop has 8GB, the old one has 3GB) among other thing, I managed to get into the operating system. There was also a popup saying that a later version of Oracle Virtual Box was available, so I installed that as well.
When it was time to start the new machine, it protested about missing USB support, since Guest Additions were not installed. So I installed Guest Additions.

Now the virtual Windows XP Pro computer displays an error text, then quickly restarts again. I do not have time to read the text, as it resets so fast.


Is this error on the export or the import side do you think?
From what I can remember, I accepted default settings when exporting...

/Thomas
SWEDEN

[drDubbelklick]

I did a "Last Known Good" recovery on the guest XP machine, and now it seems to be working.

[drDubbelklick]

I was maybe a too hasty - the problem still persists...

[mpack]

The best way to move a VirtualBox VM to another VirtualBox host is to copy the entire VM folder then use Machine|Add on the new host to register the VMs .vbox file there. About the only reason these days to prefer export/import is if you are exporting to VMWare. At any other time it should be avoided, since it makes changes to the VM.

Also, when copying any large file using a USB drive you need to check if the drive is formatted using FAT, and if so ensure that none of the files are 4GB or larger, as that is the largest file size allowed by FAT. VDI files are often larger than 4GB, and if truncated this may appear in the VM as massive disk corruption.

[drDubbelklick]

The best way to move a VirtualBox VM to another VirtualBox host is to copy the entire VM folder then use Machine|Add on the new host to register the VMs .vbox file there. About the only reason these days to prefer export/import is if you are exporting to VMWare. At any other time it should be avoided, since it makes changes to the VM.

Also, when copying any large file using a USB drive you need to check if the drive is formatted using FAT, and if so ensure that none of the files are 4GB or larger, as that is the largest file size allowed by FAT. VDI files are often larger than 4GB, and if truncated this may appear in the VM as massive disk corruption.

Splendid! I'll try that one. The strange thing, I read somewhere else that one should use Export/Import Appliance, but that may be deprecated.

/Thomas

[f456]

to prefer export/import is if you are exporting to VMWare.

Although that doesnt work, because Vmware and vbox somehow interpret the unifying standard differently...

[mpack]

If you have details on that assertion then best raise a BugTracker ticket for it.

[drDubbelklick]

The best way to move a VirtualBox VM to another VirtualBox host is to copy the entire VM folder then use Machine|Add on the new host to register the VMs .vbox file there. About the only reason these days to prefer export/import is if you are exporting to VMWare. At any other time it should be avoided, since it makes changes to the VM.

Also, when copying any large file using a USB drive you need to check if the drive is formatted using FAT, and if so ensure that none of the files are 4GB or larger, as that is the largest file size allowed by FAT. VDI files are often larger than 4GB, and if truncated this may appear in the VM as massive disk corruption.

As far as I am concerned, the matter is now resolved. Thanks!

/Thomas
SWEDEN