Issues booting Windows XP 32-bit VirtualBox

[jmatyjr]

I am having an issue booting one of my (4) VirtualBox's. When I start the VirtualBox, the VirtualBox splash screen displays and then the virtualbox windows shows a black screen. This just started happening after the battery died on my laptop making it impossible to shutdown the VirtualBox properly.

The link below shows pictures of the general settings and screen shots of the only 2 screens I can get to show after Starting the VirtualBox.

Can anyone offer any pointers as to what could be causing this issue?

I am unable to post the link so please provide an email and I will send the link to the photos. I have them uploaded to my Google Drive.

[mpack]

You don't need to post links, you can attach files directly here. However, we don't need any photographs for now.

Post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

[jmatyjr]

Here is the log file as requested.

[mpack]

Something is odd here - the log you provided doesn't show a guest boot failure, it shows a VM running happily for 1hr 45mins, then being shut down normally.

[jmatyjr]

Not sure why that would be.... It may be worth it to note that after the Oracle splash screen goes away in the VM window, I see the gray underscore blink for a split second on the top left of the window and then goes completely black. Possible video driver issue?? I do often use Windows Remote Desktop Connection to connect to this laptop from a remote location. Not sure if that would have anything to do with it??

I attached an updated log file after trying to open the Vbox again this morning.

[mpack]

Ok, the new log only has the VM running for 2 and a bit minutes, but it still doesn't show a VM failure; it again shows the VM being shut down normally. Whatever problem you have looks to be with the guest OS, not with VirtualBox.

You can try toggling the I/O APIC setting. Having this wrong is one way to get a black screen on boot with XP. However if this VM has been working as you say then I don't know why this setting would be wrong.

[jmatyjr]

I toggled the I/O checkbox on and there was no change when I booted the VBox.

Can you offer up anymore suggestions to get the guest OS to boot?

[mpack]

As I said, your problem appears to be with the guest OS, not with VirtualBox, so no, I have no suggestions as to what might be wrong. The obvious solution would be to restore the last working state from a backup.

[jmatyjr]

That would probably work if I had a backup. Thanks for your suggestions.

Do you know if it is possible to access the c:/ drive somehow? There are a bunch of files that I would like to save if I can...

[scottgus1]

You can attach the bad guest's virtual drive as a second drive on another working guest, then boot the working guest. You'll be able to access the files.

[mpack]

Since there probably isn't anything wrong with the drive you should be able to mount it in any VM that understands the NTFS filesystem. E.g. another Windows VM. There are also host tools that can access VDI contents, but the ones I know are commercial (e.g. PowerISO).