virtualbox.org

Here is the BLUF, details follow.


Host: Windows XP Pro 32 AMD Quad Core Phenom 2GB RAM
Guest: Windows XP Pro 64

When trying to do a repair installation at the GUI phase after entering the XP serial number when it says copying files I receive the Copy Error, setup cannot copy file [filename], I am using an ISO file not a physical disc. I browse to the ISO and the file in question, which is varies slightly each time I try, is there as plain as day. I choose retry and nothing will get me any further so I have to shut down the VM. If I choose ignore it just says it cannot copy another file.

Things I have tried that have not worked and resulted in the same problem:

-using another ISO
-giving the VM more memory up to 890MB
-changing the number of processors
-switching ISO from Secondary Master to Primary Slave
-changing PAE setting
-all fixes for this problem I read relate to physical systems and give solutions of a bad disc or bad memory modules, obviously that does not apply in this case and do not fix the problem.


Creating a brand new VM and installing XP 64 SP2 with the same ISO works just fine with no problems.

Both the vmdk and ISO are on an IDE controller. I don't know if that could cause the problem.



Details:
I have a HD that has some issues so I thought to use a VM to try to fix things without writing to and thus potentially furthering problems with said drive. Using another XP Pro 32bit VM I setup the physical drive to give direct access as raw. Made and attached a VMDK of 320GB which is slightly larger than the problem partition of the physical drive. Installed and ran DriveImageXML in raw mode to clone the physical HD to the VMDK. It took much longer than I thought it would but completed successfully. Everything on the VMDK is as it is on the actual physical drive.

Then I created another XP 64 VM and attached the newly cloned VMDK. Started the VM and it functions just as the physical drive does, i.e. exhibits the same problems. So I then try to do a repair installation it fails and give the copy error.



I am at loss for what the issue could be. Why does the initial part of the install work fine but not another part? Why does it copy the files without errors on a new install with a blank VM but not on a repair install with my cloned VMDK?

Any information you can provide to assist in fixing this problem is appreciated.
Thank You

This sounds like you have a Windows problem. Specifically it sounds like the filesystem on the drive is hosed. If chkdsk can't fix it then there isn't much that can be done. Certainly this has nothing to do with VirtualBox: you should be asking about this in a Windows forum.

Yes the drive has its problems with booting properly and perhaps others, but I don't see it as something beyond what a repair installation could fix potentially, at least to get it to boot. It is getting the repair installation to complete that is the first hurdle.

I don't quite know why a filesystem problem would cause an inability to read from an ISO file. Why would the Windows installation stop reading from the ISO properly? I will run chkdsk but IIRC when ran on the physical drive it gave no errors as did Spinrite. As the partition table is fine and seeing what remains on the drive when hooked up as slave works and is probably an apparent filesystem problem, I thought that is what the repair installation was meant to fix.

Being in a virtual environment I thought that perhaps it was related to a VirtualBox setting or something that is not quite right. I have a feeling that a general Windows forum would point back to something with virtualbox as the issue. Due to the fact to install windows from and ISO you most probably would be booting from USB and they would say well the USB drive is bad causing the errors or that your memory is bad etc. all things that relate to physical pieces. And those physical pieces are fine as I can use the host computer fine and run other VMs fine and use the ISO as well. As it is only software and files in the virtual environment and this one instance that is not working properly I am trying to assess what potential things are amiss with the setup or things I am not doing right in this virtual environment that could give rise to the problem.

You haven't given any evidence that tends to verify that your ISO is the problem. In fact most of your evidence indicates otherwise. All you said was "copy error", which could just as easily mean a write error on the destination drive. Why assume a read error on the ISO? In fact the former is more likely if you've already verified that the ISO is ok.

ps. Assuming that if you can see the file in the directory then it must be ok... is a bad assumption. If you see the file in the directory then that tells you the directory data structure is probably ok. The sectors containing the file's data could still be bad or contain garbage. I don't know about about ISO to know if sectors/pages etc are checksummed in any way. It's true that if you tried another ISO then you'd be hugely unlucky to find that corrupted as well, unless of course it was another copy of a bad original.

Thank you for your assistance.

mpack wrote:... which could just as easily mean a write error on the destination drive. .

If this is the case, which may be what is happening, why? I do not understand, even if the data is corrupt on the drive how it cannot be overwritten during the repair install. Again I thought that is what the repair was for, to overwrite "bad" files with good ones. Again if this is the case what about the drive could cause it to have write errors?

When in the recovery console CHKDSK said the drive is fine but when ran with /p it said "there is no disk in drive or the file system is not supported". I don't quite understand this as when it is attached to another VM CHKDSK runs and results in
This does not seem to indicate a problem that would result in causing my issue. After the chkdsk reattaching it to VM and trying the repair install again did not have any effect of the situation.

The filesystem is the "index" of files on the disk. Think of it as a broken file cabinet. A corrupted filesystem must be repaired using chkdsk, you can't repair it by moving the files around. Be warned however that in some cases of severe damage, chkdsk will not be able to repair the damage. It's really only intended to repair typical damage patterns. E.g. it can't recover if you lost half your disk image. My advice is, if you are able to mount this drive in a different VM then you should copy off any important documents if it'll let you.

Once the filesystem is repaired it will be capable of holding files again, though files already damaged may still be damaged. Hence you can then try a Windows Repair in the hope that it will replace damaged files.


I'm afraid that if you have any further questions on this then you really need to take it up on a Microsoft forum, since you clearly started with a hosed Win64 disk image, hence repairing it has nothing to do with VirtualBox.

As I was unsure whether or not I had a Virtualbox issue this is where I began. I will continue to look elsewhere.

Thank you for the info and assistance.