virtualbox.org

I have Windows XP guest on a Win 8 host.

I want to install a new virtual hard drive on the guest . I went to 'Storage' under 'settings' in the VM manager. then clicked 'add' then created a new VDI under secondary master, however when I start the VM it doesn't see the new hard drive even with "Disk Management" under Administrative Tools/ "Computer Management".

Thanks

Make sure the VM settings shows the second drive as attached to the VM on the IDE controller, not SATA. If that is the case then entering Disk Management inside the guest and selecting that drive will make XP offer to initialize the drive.

XP doesn't support SATA natively - you would have to install the Intel drivers, which you can do later, and frankly there probably isn't a pressing need to do it at all.

Yes, the attribute under 'storage' says 'hard disk: IDE Primary Slave', but when I start the machine it doesn't appear.

Ok, so you boot up the guest, and inside the guest you select My Computer | Manage | Disk Management ... and then what happens? Post a screenshot of the dialog box that appears.

Hope this helps...

Ok, post a VM log file please, as a zipped attachment - and include a copy of the VM's .vbox file as well.
To get the log file, make sure the VM is shut down then right click it in the GUI and select "Show Log". I only want the latest log, I don't need all four.

In the meantime, some random notes.

• It's good practice to unmount the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso image after you've installed the GAs.
• In Disk Management in the guest, does the Action|Rescan disks function make any difference?
• Is this a standard release of XP, or has it been nLited?

You can try the following in command prompt.

diskpart
select disk 0
list disk
exit

Which is the latest log?


I removed the CD drive
Rescanning doesn't help.
this is a standard XP not nlited





Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\TDW>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.1.3565

Copyright (C) 1999-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: TURBOPC

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn
-------- ---------- ------- ------- ---
* Disk 0 Online 10 GB 0 B

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

C:\Documents and Settings\TDW>

"VBox.log" is the latest log.

Earlier you said that this was a standard XP, not nLited. However, I see in the log that the primary disk is called XPSP3 (Service Pack 3 was never part of retail XP, in fact SP3 didn't appear until Vista was well established). Also, I see that the path to the primary disk is "C:\Users\D\Downloads", which tends to suggest a download rather than something you installed yourself. Where did this this XP come from?


Just to be clear: XP may still be the most popular guest OS out there. Hence lots of people use it, and lots of those regularly attach a 2nd drive to their VMs - in fact I do it myself quite often in order to transfer data between VMs. I've never experienced this problem or seen it reported by others. This argues that there is something unusual about your system.

Yeah I did download the VDI file. I guess I will just install it from a distribution CD.

Hold on. I'm just in the process of reproducing your issue... and in fact I just got the same results using a kosher XP SP2 - no recognition by XP that a new disk is attached. I will investigate further.

mpack wrote:Hold on. I'm just in the process of reproducing your issue... and in fact I just got the same results using a kosher XP SP2 - no recognition by XP that a new disk is attached. I will investigate further.

OK, great

FYI, I downloaded it from torlock

In that case it's unfortunate but I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop supporting you directly. We can't be seen to condone the use of stolen software.

For the benefit of legit users, XP doesn't seem to always auto-detect when you add a 2nd drive to an IDE controller. In my case it didn't detect the drive, but did detect both drives when I switched the XP VM to a SATA controller (see Howto | Windows Guests). Puzzlingly, when I switched back to IDE the VM continued to see both drives. Even more puzzling, I then created two more XP VMs (all VMs discussed are cloned from an XP Pro SP2 template I use), with the intention of seeing if Control Panel "Add New Hardware" worked, but XP Disk Management detected the 2nd drive in both cases, even though in test 3 I thought I made sure to do exactly what I did in test 1. Very odd.