virtualbox.org

Hello everyone,
I am trying to create a VHD (or a similar format image) from a Win8 64bit which came pre-installed on my new notebook (it's an OEM license so I don't have the OS installation discs).
I'm planning to use this VHD to create a virtual machine with Virtualbox.
I use Virtualbox both in Windows and Ubuntu hosts but to keep it simple I'm having problems with Virtualbox running on a Win8 hosts (the same host I'm trying to image).
I used both Macrium Reflect and VMware vCenter Converter to image my OS and created two virtual HDs, a VHD and a VMDK, but when I create a new VM and try mounting the virtual hard disks the VM fails to boot.
All I have is a black screen and a 'FATAL: no bootable medium found' message.
I tried several combinations of settings (IO/APIC on and off, IDE and SATA controller) and even tried to turn on the EFI feature (in this case Virtualbox crashes).
Still nothing.
I'm wondering if I did something wrong when creating the VHD/VMDK because it looks like the virtual hard disks are not bootable.
When imaging my HD I only imaged the partitions which were strictly necessary for Windows, I didn't include my Data partition or the Hewlett Packard Recovery Partition.
I'm attaching both the virtual machines logs and a screenshot of my HD's partitions, hopefully somebody might find that useful to understand what's gone wrong.
Thanks in advance.

It seems that your host is booting from EFI. VirtualBox's implementation for EFI is not complete and as such I expect it to fail.

Are you trying to have a second Windows installation on VBox (and you're missing the installation media, that's why you're trying to virtualize your host), OR are you trying to make a backup of your host?

Thanks for your reply and sorry if I took quite a long time to answer, these are troubled times for me.
Yes, the boot partition is an EFI partition, Windows 8 uses that feature.
And you got it, I'm trying to have a second Windows installation on VBox (and I'm missing the installation media, that's why I'm trying to virtualize my host).
My notebook came with an OEM license and thus I do not have any installation media.
I'm actually planning to get rid of Win8 and downgrade to Win7 (I do have a physical media for that matter) but, being a web developer, I first wanted to create a virtual HD of my current Win8 installation to use in the future for testing purposes.

In these last weeks I further investigated the issue and came to the conclusion that the problem IS NOT with VBox, the problem is that the software I used to create the VHD (VMware Converter Standalone) cannot properly configure the boot partition on the Virtual Disk.
Looks like a few people had the same problem, as you can read here:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1037507
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/2 ... 5&tstart=0 (second post from top)

The key of the problem seems to lie in an inaccurate BCD configuration data... I have found a few resources about this issue but am still looking for an expert's advice...
Any idea?

Thanks for your help.
Regards,
Stef.

I've only done physical to virtual (P2V) once, with an old NT4 system. I used Disk2VHD from Microsoft. Worked out great. But, it was BIOS, not EFI. I would search for "P2V site:forums.virtualbox.org".

I did try using Disk2VHD but looks like the VHD it produced is not bootable either for some strange problem.
I think I'll stick to VMware Converter.
Thanks for your answers,
Regards.