Windows 7 Virtual Machine not starting - BOOTMGR is missing

[ggenov]

I am trying to start my Windows 7 (64 bit) Virtual Machine, hosted on Windows 7 64 bit, but am getting a "BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart" error.

Any ideas on what I might do to get this Virtual Machine working?

Thanks.

Attached find log file and .vbox file.

VBox.log

Log file

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[mpack]

What happened between this VM working and then not working?

You really should stop using 4.3.14, as that was one of the buggiest releases in the history of VirtualBox. Either revert to 4.3.12, or try the latest release (4.3.20 at the time of writing).

Also, the rule of thumb is that you give no more than 50% of your available host RAM to a VM. You have 13.7GB available, you have given 10GB to the VM. That is asking for trouble.

Likewise you have a quad core host and have assigned all 4 to the VM. What does the host run on? It's best not to give a VM more resources that it needs. The idea is to consume resources that are otherwise idle, not kill the host.

[ggenov]

Nothing changed from the last time it worked.

My last change was adding a new Sata storage. It was working fine and after I had shut down I took a snapshot.

Today I tried starting the VM and got the error.

[mpack]

Well, the error is coming from the guest, not from VirtualBox, so it's actually a Windows 7 problem that you have.

Did you move the VM's boot disk from IDE to SATA? That is quite likely to cause this. As would deleting the boot manager partition. But these are really Win7 support issues which you can Google for.

[ggenov]

Google'ing would suggest to repair Windows, but how can I do it on the VM?

I did not move or deleted any boot disk.

[ggenov]

I tried using the Sata(0) .vdi to create a new VM and this boots correctly, but obviously I have lost most of the snapshoted data.

I'm now trying to clone the last correct snapshot into a new VM.

[mpack]

Snapshots are a data management feature, not affected by the hardware recipe of the VM. However, if you were to change the hardware after a snapshot was taken, and then revert back to the earlier state, then of course hardware errors might pop up.

[ggenov]

Is there a way to repair windows on a VM?

[ggenov]

I managed to repair Windows and booted machine successfully.

[phantom21]

may I ask how you fixed the bootmgr problem in the VM?

[ggenov]

Hi phantom21,

I changed the boot order to CD and using the Windows 7 installation disc, chose the repair Windows option.

Hope this helps.