[Solved] Machine wont boot. E_FAIL (0x80004005)

[ksherman91]

Hi,

I've got a lot of important work on my virtual machine that I need to finish up promptly. I Haven't really made any changes to my PC since I last booted the VM and now it wont start. No windows updates or anything.

The virtual machine 'MachineName' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1). More details may be available in 'C:\Users\user\VirtualBox VMs\CoinFacctory\Logs\VBoxStartup.log'.

Result Code:
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component:
MachineWrap
Interface:
IMachine {f30138d4-e5ea-4b3a-8858-a059de4c93fd}

In the logs I see:

Fatal error:
3284.3288: Error loading 'crypt32.dll': 1790 [C:\Windows\system32\crypt32.dll]
325c.3260: supR3HardNtChildWaitFor[2]: Quitting: ExitCode=0x1 (rcNtWait=0x0, rcNt1=0x0, rcNt2=0x103, rcNt3=0x103, 494 ms, the end);
3248.324c: supR3HardNtChildWaitFor[1]: Quitting: ExitCode=0x1 (rcNtWait=0x0, rcNt1=0x0, rcNt2=0x103, rcNt3=0x103, 1674 ms, the end);

I've tried backing up the VM folder, uninstalling, and reinstalling VBOX without luck.

I tried moving the backup to another pc to try it there, but for some reason I can't move the ~40GB folder onto my 1TB external with ~700GB free. It tells me there isn't enough room which makes no sense at all.

All I can find in google is people getting this after an old windows 7 update that I don't have installed. I can't find anything else to even try.

Please help!

[mpack]

Errors like this don't just create themselves. Something changed. If we can't even establish that fact then this conversation is off to a bad start.

I'm not sure why you mention disk space concerns?

I do need to know the VirtualBox version.

Your disk space management concerns on your external drive is obviously between you and the host OS. As a quick guess I'd check to see if the disk is FAT formatted, i.e. is it limited to 4GB max file size.

[ksherman91]

Errors like this don't just create themselves. Something changed. If we can't even establish that fact then this conversation is off to a bad start.

I'm not sure why you mention disk space concerns?

I do need to know the VirtualBox version.

Your disk space management concerns on your external drive is obviously between you and the host OS. As a quick guess I'd check to see if the disk is FAT formatted, i.e. is it limited to 4GB max file size.

All I've done is install a couple video games. Not exactly relevant far as I know. I cannot recall any other changes... I checked to see if windows updated anything and there are no new updates listed since I last ran the VM. I've actually blocked windows from updating itself so it's not likely that's the cause.

I found another drive that seems to be working. I mentioned it because I'm attempting to check if the backup works on my laptop and it was looking like that wasn't an option.

I currently have the test build installed. Before that I tried 5.0.2 (the most recent version). Previously I had the version prior to 5.0.2 installed. I had been avoiding the update in fear of situations like this.

[ksherman91]

I found the previous installer. I was on VirtualBox-4.3.28-100309-Win

[ksherman91]

I'm currently unpacking the VM backup on y laptop (Win7) where I've installed a fresh copy of the latest version of VM (Not the technical preview). I've got about a 30 minute wait. Will update with info when it works / fails.

[ksherman91]

Alright, thankfully it booted fine and my data is ok.

For googlers that find this in the future here's what I did.

I have no idea what caused this or what the fix is.

I was running a windows 10 technical preview version that I blocked from updating because updates were incompatible with my GPU and that was annoying. I installed VB after I blocked updates and it ran fine for months. I don't know what changed, but I was able to back it up by finding the proper folder for the VM I needed, raring it up, and moving it to a new machine with a fresh install of VB and unpacking it to the right spot, and importing it to VB (Machine -> Add -> pick the VM inside the folder you backed up.)

Next step will be to reformat my machine back down to windows 7, restore the VM, and hopefully get back to work.

A quick fix would be nice, but it sounds like nobody knows how such a thing could have happened, or how to repair it.

I may have caused the problem in the following way:

When I was booting up I was booting it from a saved state. I noticed it was a saved state right after I clicked start and decided I wanted a fresh boot. The machine hadn't booted yet so I assumed I misclicked or that it would fail to launch. (I would occasionally have trouble starting up saved states, the solution to that was always just to try like 3 times). So right after I clicked start I clicked discard saved state, then booted it again to get the errors posted above. It's possible this broke everything, but I really don't know.

I'd be interested in hearing any input from anyone else though. Not exactly the most convenient fix for something so out of the blue that renders the host machine completely incapable of booting VM's.

I'm just happy my data is safe. Needless to say I'll be making more backups from here on out.