FATAL: No bootable medium found!

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
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Regulus
Posts: 2
Joined: 6. May 2013, 03:05

FATAL: No bootable medium found!

Post by Regulus »

Greetings- I'm installing Red Hat 64-bit on Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.12 in Windows 7, using the VB manual. I have searched this forum and the internet and haven't found a solution.

While I created the virtual machine, I allocated 512 Mb of RAM. and selected VDI as the hard drive file type. Then I created a New fixed-size file of 32Gb for the hard disk image. I thought it created the image on my physical hard disk.

When I came to the VM Manager window, I clicked Start with Red Hat selected. The Select Startup Disk dialog box popped up and I chose VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (56.73Mb). Then I got this error in the command window:
FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted
The other option was the E:\ drive, which is the DVD drive. The only reason it was an option, I think, is because I had a cd in the drive.

I thought the .iso file was the one option to choose because of this statement in the manual:
If you have downloaded installation media from the Internet in the form of an ISO image file (most probably in the case of a Linux distribution), you would normally burn this file to an empty CD or DVD and proceed as just described. With VirtualBox however, you can skip this step and mount the ISO file directly. VirtualBox will then present this file as a CD or DVD-ROM drive to the virtual machine, much like it does with virtual hard disk images.
Before selecting the .iso file, I tried browsing for the medium:
If your medium is not in the list (especially if you are using VirtualBox for the first time), select the small folder icon next to the drop-down list to bring up a standard file dialog, with which you can pick the image file on your host disks.
It seems that the file to open is: C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox, which is the same as the file that appears in the drop-down menu list. Choosing the file from that list and choosing it from my C:\ of course lead to this same "FATAL" error.

Now, when I open the Red Hat hard disk and hit F12 I see:
VirtualBox temporary boot device selection
Detected Hard disks:
AHCI controller:
1) Hard disk
Other boot devices: f)Floppy c)CD-ROM l) LAN b)Continue booting
Choosing (1) and choosing (b) both lead to the "FATAL" error.

More VB Manager specs:
The Boot Order is Floppy, CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
The Acceleration is VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging, PAE/NIX

I think the problem is that I don't have Red Hat installed. I already have Ubuntu installed in the VirtualBox Manager on another virtual disk. But since that disk can't talk to the new Red Hat disk, I don't think I could just download RH in Ubuntu and install it from there. So how should I proceed?

Thanks!
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: FATAL: No bootable medium found!

Post by Perryg »

VirtualBox does not provide the installation media for any guests. You must obtain them yourself. If you download a Linux operating system it should be in the form of an ISO and that is what you attach to the virtual CD Drive.
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