[Solved] Cannot find differencing snapshot etc.

[sisyphus876]

I am fairly new to VirtualBox, but trusted it so much that I used it to consolidate a couple of physical linux servers. Now I can't get one of the server VMs to run, and any urgent assistance that can be provided with this problem would be most greatly appreciated.

I am currently running VirtualBox 4.2.16 on Windows 7. In it, I'm running a couple of Linux-based VM's which, up to yesterday were working fine, until I created a snapshot of one VM then shut down VirtualBox. The shut down process seemed to have been graceful. I didn't kill any processes, and didn't suffer any crashes or power failures as I've seen mentioned in other threads, and I got no error messages.

Current Problem:
Unable to open the VM that I last did the snapshot of. VM "Inaccessible" with error:

A differencing image of snapshot {a236ec43-a9de-4dab-bc88-dd1b4eaf9d7d} could not be found. Could not find an open hard disk with UUID {b9acc2bd-2207-48fc-96b3-aba823645d43}.
Result Code:
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component:
SnapshotMachine
Interface:
IMachine {22781af3-1c96-4126-9edf-67a020e0e858}

Done Since:
I've spent several hours reading through threads here and making some seemingly pointless attempts to solve this, but nothing that I've tried with my limited understanding of how this system works, has really helped.

a) I took a look at the VirtualBox.xml file, and it seemed ok to my novice eye.

b) I opened up the My VM - original.vbox file (the name of the VM that won't open) in a text editor and I see a long list of Snapshots, many of them matching up with the file names that do exist in the Snapshot folder.

c) Tried to reassign the UUID for the My VM.vdmk file using the command line interface, I did it a couple of times and it gave me new UUID's but even when I plugged those into the My VM - original.vbox file where I thought it was necessary, it didn't help.'

d) I also upgraded VirtualBox to the version listed above, previously I was running 4.2.4 I believe. All of my other VMs still work fine, this one still gives the same error.

e) At one point, I was able to create a new VM from scratch and then point it to the My VM.vdmk file, but by doing so I only was able to get the VM back to the original state -- without any of our data. I presume that all of our data is in the Snapshots, but I have not been able to figure out how to restore them if I continued along the path of creating an entirely new VM. So far, and much to my disappointment, Snapshots seem to be a waste of time.

f) Renamed My VM - original.vbox to My VM - original Backup.vbox then (as per some other thread) renamed My VM - original.vbox-prev back to My VM - original.vbox and tried to run that instead. Same problem.

I would really appreciate your assistance with this, I've been reading threads for hours but cannot seem to find a solution here, and the server that runs in this VM (and most importantly the data in it) is most critical.

Thank you all.

[sisyphus876]

SOLVED: This was solved using the CloneVDI tool.

Here's how:

I simply ran CloneVDI and pointed the Source to the latest snapshot .vmdk file, and it went through all my various snapshots from there and created one new .VDI file.

Then, I created an entirely new Virtual Machine using VirtualBox, and when prompted to create a disk, I selected 'use existing' and pointed it to the .VDI file that CloneVDI created.

After that, all that I needed to do was modify my network settings to match those that I had originally, then start up the VM.
It has worked flawlessly!

[mpack]

Thanks for taking the time to bring closure to this topic.