Recover Files from crashed virtualbox

[KevinCPS]

Hi everyone

I am having a lot of trouble using my virtualbox with Windows 7 64 bit on it. Everything worked fine untill yesterday. I could not acces my virtual machine with "connect to external desktop" so I tried to remove the virtual pc out of the domain into a workgroup. I had to restart the virtual machine to apply my settings. I pressed OK . After I did this the virtual machine refuses to boot : I get this error : "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem : ..... status : 0xc000000e . I have tried reparing the machine with a windows 7 disc but this did not work. All of my recovery points are lost aswell. When i try to attach the VHD file as a harddrive on my normal computer this works but I cannot find the files I need. I was programming in Visual Studio on the machine and I really need to find the coding I allready did. Normally my project is in a folder in my documents , visuals studio 2010 , projects. When I try to search the my project folder I get results but not what I need, it finds 2 folders but it seems my project is shattered all over the place. It finds a folder in this place : H:\found.000\dir0010.chk or H:\found.000\dir0013.chk\Visual Studio 2010 . When i open these folders the folders don't contain any items.

Does anyone know how I get the machine back to work properly or at least how to find my visual studio projects back?

Thanks in advance

Vandoorn Kevin

[scottgus1]

A few things may help: Please define for us "connect to external desktop". Will the guest boot into safe mode? Did you change any of the guest's settings in the Virtualbox GUI window?

The "found" and .chk files remind me of the ChkDsk file "recovery" functions.

If Virtualbox starts the guest, you get no Virtualbox error pop-ups, and you get something Windows-y in the guest screen, then Virtualbox is doing its job and the problem is all in the guest OS. You can ask on the Microsoft forums how to get things running again.

Or restore from a backup.

Thoughts for the future: any important data I have in a virtual machine is backed up to a shared folder on a physical machine so I can restore it if the virtual machine dies, and I have copies of the virtual machine folder itself saved off as a disk image backup.

[KevinCPS]

Scott

With "connect to external desktop" I am reffering to the "mstsc.exe" that windows provides sorry for the misunderstood translation.

I did not change anything in the virtualbox GUI window. I only removed the machine from the domain to a workgroup and restarted. This is when the problem occurd.

I cannot choose to boot in safe mode. When i start the VM I immediatly get the Windows boot manager : windows failed to start with error code 0xc000000e .

I know i've should have taken a proper backup but I haven't got any backups.

So you think the error does not apply to virtual box but is a Window problem? I have tried everyting to recover the windows , with the disc, system recovery , scandsk , ...

[scottgus1]

I did a quick search on "Windows boot manager : windows failed to start with error code 0xc000000e" and got a good number of folks who have this problem on their physical PCs, so I'd say it is not a Virtualbox issue. Try asking on Microsoft's forums or doing a web search. Keep in mind that if a solution requires you to download an ISO file and burn it to a CD, you can skip the burning part and point the guest's CD drive at the ISO file itself.

[KevinCPS]

Scott

Thanks for the help. I will try to search the windows error and I hope i can restore the VM. I will keep you posted.

[KevinCPS]

I have used the program Kernel for VHD to recover my files. Windows was not able to recover not even with a DVD.

[scottgus1]

Glad you got your data back, Kevin!

As a suggestion, for backup purposes, make a copy of the virtual machine folder on another reliable hard drive or two. The virtual machine folder usually contains all the files necessary to restore the VM, including the definition files and all virtual disks associated with the VM. If you have all the drives stored in the VM folder as they are by default, then just copying the folder is the same as duplicating an entire PC, hardware and software.