Macrium VHD Fails to Boot

[eMurphy]

Hello,

Here's the context of my problem:

I've been using VBox to test backups created with Macrium to verify backup integrity over the last 2-3 weeks. I succeeded with my first image of my laptop and deleted the VHD as I know longer needed it. The images of my second machine (a desktop) have been failing with Guru Meditation errors. I've researched it from different angles and still end up with boot failures.

What I've tried:

• I found some posts about ATI Hydravision causing this (and found Hydravision errors in the logs when using VBox on my laptop), so I made sure there were no traces of Hydravision on the desktop from which images were being created, and found no Hydravision installed in the first place. I found Hydravision installed on the laptop, uninstalled it, and received no more Hydravision errors, but still no boot.
  
  I used VBox on both the laptop and the desktop to run the image of the desktop - no perceivable difference
  
  I tried different settings - disabled and enabled PAE/NX, Nested Paging, 2D and 3D Acceleration, Use Host I/O cache, and USB 2.0 (EHCI) Controller in different combinations
  
  I tried creating the VM with no Virtual Disk, then go back and add the VHD per a post I found
  
  I deleted the Extended Partition I made a while back for experimenting with Linux since I couldn't boot to it anymore - that didn't work, so I merged the partitions into one and that still made no difference
  
  Per another post somewhere, I ran ckdsk on the desktop from which the images are made, and that did find some sort of issue that it corrected. Recreated the image and VHD, and still no boot
  
  I tried older versions of VBox 4.3 and 4.2; On 4.2 I don't get the Guru Meditation error, but instead it sits indefinitely at a black screen with a blinking cursor with no text and does not receive input

You'll find the logs and the machine's hardware build attached. You'll notice that most of the hardware is quite old (5-9 years old depending on component), as in still running DDR2 (sigh). I really appreciate any useful feedback I can get!

Thanks

[scottgus1]

One thing to remember with virtualization, regardless of the source, is that all the hardware the backup image sees will be different from the PC the image came from, even if the computer hosting the virtualizer is the computer the image came from. It's just like pulling the hard drive out of one computer and sticking the drive into a different computer, then booting it up. The OS will be expecting entirely different hardware and will need to compensate properly. The compensating part seems to be the problem for your setup.

What you're really trying is P2V (physical to virtual) migration. The OS must be changed slightly for this to work, even if it does boot the first time. Different drivers, registry settings, etc. Getting the backup to boot in a virtual machine doesn't confirm it will boot on the source PC.

What I would do in your case to test your backups is restore that backup to a temporary hard drive, put that hard drive in the source PC on a second connector cable and set the boot order in the PC BIOS to boot from that new hard drive, just as a test. If it boots & works, your backup is good. (Myself, I would, after restoring to the temporary drive, also put a unique text file on the root of the temporary drive that isn't on the root of the original drive, as a flag to indicate I'm booting from the correct drive. And I would not physically swap the drives, possibly breaking the first drive.)