Use Virtual PC VHD file with Vbox?

[Dipplydokus]

Relatively new to VMs. Been using Virtual PC on Win 7 box for some time. Friend installed VirtualBox for another application and I liked it so well, I wanted to move the VHD to Vbox. According to what I've read, it should be a simple matter, but nothing I have done has worked - clonehd, adding the VHD thru the GUI to name a few. It always seems like something needs to be done first before any of these will work but I couldn't find diddly on that.Anyhoo, by doing various tweaks and editing vBox files I got it to the point of everything loading into Vbox without error. But when I started the machine, I got:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine WinXP1.

Failed to open image 'C:\Users\Ken\VirtualBox VMs\WinXP1\WinXP1.vhd' in read-write mode rc=VERR_VD_INVALID_TYPE (VERR_VD_INVALID_TYPE).

Failed to attach driver below us! Invalid image type. (VERR_VD_INVALID_TYPE).

PIIX3 cannot attach drive to the Primary Master (VERR_VD_INVALID_TYPE).

Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole {8ab7c520-2442-4b66-8d74-4ff1e195d2b6}

The problem is that when I initially set up the machine, I told it to use a dynamically allocated HD, however, the VHD from Virtual PC is a fixed HD, hence the error. Question is if there is any way to just let VBox know that the HD is really of fixed type? I don't see anything obvious in the XML, and it has been such a pain making this work at all, I'd hate to have go through the setup and re-tweaking of everything if I can just change some XML somewhere.

Tia,
Ken

[Perryg]

Actually VHD is a type of file format and while VirtualBox can in fact read them the content is not native to it. What you need to do first is remove any guest additions and write down the configuration from the VPC side. Then create a new machine and use the same setting (as close as possible ) to those used in VPC and when asked to create a new HDD select to use an existing one, and select the *.vhd you are wanting to use. Try to leave as much default as you can to avoid creating more problems.

If the guest does not want to boot right off you need to try to start it in safe mode to let the guest see if it can find the VirtualBox drivers. If this fails then you need to post the guests log file ( as an attachment ) so we can see if it indicates what is wrong.

[Dipplydokus]

Thanks very much. Just to clarify a point you made - that would be 'guest additions' on the VPC side, correct?

[Perryg]

correct.