Install XP on Virtualbox

Rick_Dallas · Post by **Rick_Dallas** » 16. Jun 2008, 04:02

Newbie running Ubuntu 8.04. Installed virtualbox. No problem. Want to install XP. BIG problem. Bottom line, get error message "FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted" when I try to install. I've googled this error for days and tried lots of things. Probably a simple thing but so far, no luck.

The disk IS bootable from THIS CD drive on THIS machine. When I put the CD in, Ubuntu reads it and displays it. If I restart my PC with the CD in the drive, it boots up and asks if I want to do a Windows install. There is no question the CD is bootable although the error message would tend to make you believe otherwise.

This is NOT a ISO file. Just a typical Windows XP CD.

I've tried doing it with the CD mounted and without. I've deleted the XP installation and started over again. Have the newest version of Virtualbox (1.62)

I know the CD is bootable and readable so I'm perplexed by the error message. There must be something different about putting this CD in the drive that Virtualbox does not understand because best I can tell, it can't read the disc.

I'm open for any/all suggestions.

Thanks guys.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 16. Jun 2008, 14:49

Have you tried the option "Passthrough"? There are some discs that need that. I don't use the physical cd drive often, only used it once and that was to burn a cd. I enabled passthrough because I needed the write ability. Perhaps the option involves more than just support for burning a disc.

kestrel1 · Post by **kestrel1** » 16. Jun 2008, 19:22

I assume that the CD drive is the first boot device for the XP install.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 16. Jun 2008, 20:42

kestrel1 wrote:I assume that the CD drive is the first boot device for the XP install.

That does not matter if there is no other boot media before it. So if he starts with a new VM, the CD is the only medium that can boot.

kestrel1 · Post by **kestrel1** » 16. Jun 2008, 22:15

If you have two CD/DVD drives, try the other drive. I just tried this on my system & with the HDD set before the CD in the boot order I get the error that you say above, if the CD is in the wrong drive. If the CD is set before the HDD & the disk is in the wrong drive or the disk is not bootable you will get a:
FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.
error.
Do you have more than one CD/DVD drive?

Rick_Dallas · Post by **Rick_Dallas** » 17. Jun 2008, 00:40

Hey, thanks for all the responses.

Yep, have tried the passthrough checkbox. Sorry, forgot to mention that.

CD is set as first bootable and I only have one CD drive. Great thought but anyway.........

Any more ideas?

I don't know enough about it to ask intelligent questions but I understand it's looking at the CD drive (hopefully!) to boot from. Is it possible that it's looking for a Linux boot disk? Doesn't make any sense to me but it appears that the install window is looking for a OS that is not XP else it would boot. Even doing a Windows install, a PC will boot up even if the HD has not been partitioned or formatted and take care of that for you. Not familiar enough with Linux yet to understand how it acts.

Odd I know but Hell, the whole thing is odd to me. Just a thought.

Thanks again.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 17. Jun 2008, 10:11

Try to make a bootable ISO from the disc. If you do that, then you remove the disc and drive variables. I'm sure there are plenty of howto's for Linux to create an ISO from a cd and keep it bootable, or make it bootable afterwards. Or just download one

.

Ted-UK · Post by **Ted-UK** » 17. Jun 2008, 21:30

Another idea to try:

1. Use something like K3b to create an iso file from the WinXP CD.'
2. In the Settings > CD/DVD section select the iso image as the CD to be mounted rather than the physical drive.
3. Start the VM and see if it boots from the iso file image.

I had a similar problem when I was playing with Qemu. In Qemu, the default cd drive was given as /dev/cdrom, but my machine uses SATA drives, so the CD wouldn't work unless I changed the cd drive to /dev/scd0. Maybe VBox have something similar?

Best of luck,
Ted

Rick_Dallas · Post by **Rick_Dallas** » 17. Jun 2008, 21:45

I'm not positive but I think ya'll are both saying the same thing. I found an ubuntu app on my PC this morning for burning CDs (sorry, can't remember the name of it now). It let's you burn an ISO image. Anyway, when I left the house, it was supposed to be creating an ISO for my Windows CD.

Interesting about the SATA drives. That's all my PC has so that might be another angle.

I know when I get home if it worked or not. Hopefully so.

I'll let ya'll know.

Thanks again.

Rick_Dallas · Post by **Rick_Dallas** » 18. Jun 2008, 04:21

Ok, tried Brasero that came with Ubuntu. No go.

Virtual box also shows my CD drive to be

(/dev/scd0) just like yours did.

Tried the following commands:

dd if=/dev/scd0 of=~/Desktop/mycdimage.iso

and

dd if=//dev/scd0 of=$HOME/cdrom_image.iso

No workie. Can't tell if I'm getting closer or futher away

They all hit the drive but then it just quits after a few seconds.

But the BEST part (small sarcasm) is that I can no longer boot into Vista!!! Yep, believe it or not. On a PC that has always been rock solid. Another project for the weekend.....

Still looking for other ideas. You guys are doing great.......I think! LOL

Post by **Sasquatch** » 18. Jun 2008, 10:08

Then you can try my alternative solution, download an XP cd. You can find it on any P2P network and on Usenet. This does not violate any MS rules AFAIK, because you pay for the licence, not the cd. You might even find an ISO on MS MSDN site. You have to be an MSDN member though, but you never know if the download location is freely accessible.

Ted-UK · Post by **Ted-UK** » 18. Jun 2008, 10:13

Hi Rick,

This is really strange! I'm assuming you were trying to create the iso images in your normal OS and not from within the VM. If this is true, you should have been able to create the iso file from the CD using either K3b or the dd command. (I never found the way to do this in Brasero, which is why I stick with K3b.)

The command you used:
dd if=/dev/scd0 of=~/Desktop/mycdimage.iso
looks OK to me. The only difference is that I usually add "bs=2048" at the end.

Was the CD mounted or unmounted when you tried the dd command?
Did you do the dd command as root?
Just to be thorough, could you try both:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=~/Desktop/mycdimage.iso
dd if=/media/cdrom of=~/Desktop/mycdimage.iso

The other possibility is that this is one of those "hardware things" that can be tricky to resolve. I find it especially strange that Vista won't boot now, since I'm assuming you didn't do anything to the hard drive or the Vista partition.

I'll keep an eye on this thread to see how you're getting on.

Best of luck,
Ted

Rick_Dallas · Post by **Rick_Dallas** » 18. Jun 2008, 14:03

Ah, another great idea! Log in as root. That might work. I'm just logged it as myself. Maybe........

Just figured I'd get some type of error message indicating I didn't have the rights or something if this were the case but maybe not. And it does hit the drive without complaining but I'm still trying to figure the OS out so anything is possible. At least, thats easy and quick to try.

If that doesn't work, I'll look for a XP iso. I'm sure I can find one somewhere.

REALLY appreciate the comments. I've been working PCs with Windows for so long, sometimes I forget this isn't Windows and what I "know", doesn't mean much here!

Thanks again.

Ted-UK · Post by **Ted-UK** » 18. Jun 2008, 19:03

Hi Rick,

I strongly urge you never to login as root!

If you need to do something that needs root privileges, then open a terminal, type su and then enter the root password. You will see the $ change to # indicating you are now issuing commands within the terminal (but not within your OS as a whole). Then try the dd commands.

If one of them works, then set your virtual machine to boot from the iso you've created and see if that works.

For Ubuntu and many Debian-based distros you can also use "$ sudo <some-command>" and then enter your user password.

Personally, I would be suspicious of a WinXP iso downloaded from the web unless it was from MS.

Let us know how you get on, especially if it works. We all learn from the successes.

Best of luck,
Ted

Rick_Dallas · Post by **Rick_Dallas** » 21. Jun 2008, 17:40

Well, good news is XP is finally installed and I am currently in the middle of receiving all the updates to SP3.

The bad news is..... well, against my better judgment, had to download a version of XP sp2 ISO file. Luckily for me, I was able to download it and install it with no ill effects (so far!). Once the file was downloaded, virtualbox ran without any problems and installed it very quickly. I don't feel too badly about as I do own a legal copy of XP. I'm just glad so far that the copy of XP I downloaded does not appear to have any sinister intentions

So, although it is now up and working, I really don't know how else I could done this.

I did download the K3b application but it wouldn't work with the CD drive I have either. I did also login as root from terminal and tried both of the commands that were suggested but no go. Essentially, a file gets created on your desktop and something gets written to it but it completes after about 3 seconds. Same as before.

So although the end result was achieved, I still don't know why I am able to put in a cd, Ubuntu will display the contents of the CD on my desktop but won't boot from it AND I couldn't create an ISO from it. For whatever reason, Ubuntu does not recoginize it as a boot disk but haven't figured out why yet. Ubuntu sees the drive for what it is but won't allow an ISO to be created. Later today, I am going to use a XP tool to try and create an ISO from this drive and I'm betting it will work but don't want to get ahead of myself. This used to be no brainer in Vista I was using but let's see how well the same software package works on VM.

The drive is a Sony Burner that I purchase about 3 months ago. Wouldn't think it would have any known compatibilty issues.

Ok, now to see if I can get USB devices I have to work under Ubuntu and XP. Need my printer some days. Also need my phone some days so those will be the first things I work with.

Will keep you in the loop as I go........

Rick