error loading operating system XP

[resonus]

Hello

I've been using VB for a few years (excellent btw, used the Parallels and VM too, hands down a winner) but I have a strange issue with my XP vdi.
It's an original XP.vdi install on a mac host and it mostly works well, usually for weeks on end.

Then for no obvious reason, when trying to start the machine, I get 'error loading operating system' and that's as far as I get.
I have to go delete the vdi and drag my backup across and off we go again.

It's not a major crisis as I always keep back ups and I have 7, 8 and Unbuntu too, none of which exhibit the same behaviour, but it is mildly irritating.

Anyone know what causes it and if it can be resolved?

Thanks.

[mpack]

It sounds like (virtual) disk corruption. That would have many causes, e.g. cutting the power, running out of host disk space, some kind of host disk glitches etc. Have you run a host disk check?

[resonus]

Hi
I've done a host disk check, all seems well.
However, I have seemingly induced the error.

I ran disk defragment on the XP machine and, being as this was the only thing I did, restart the machine and got the error message.

[mpack]

In terms of low level disk operations (read/write/seek) as seen by VirtualBox, there's nothing special about a disk defragment process run inside the guest - except that it will tend to inflate a dynamic VDI, plus of course it moves data around so if your host disk has a bad sector, this might cause it to be hit. I had a recent problem of exactly that kind myself, I eventually replaced the hard disk.

A quick disk check on the host only tests filesystem structures, it will not find bad sectors. To do that you normally have to select a "thorough check" or other wording along those lines (I'm not a Mac user, I can't tell you the exact wording).

Virtual disk image files are of course very large, making it more probable that these will be affected by bad sectors on the host drive.

[Jiwre]

Get support from tutorial: http://tinyurl.com/Error-Loading-Operating-System