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VM will not boot from VDI/Guru Meditation during XP repair

Posted: 24. Oct 2015, 18:48
by GeorgeA
Virtual Box Version: 5.0.8 r103449. No guest additions installed in guest OS (because I've never successfully gotten it to boot).
Host OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1 (6.1.7601)
Host RAM: 7658MB total, 5398MB available
Guest OS: Windows XP Professional 32-bit with SP3
Guest RAM: 2048MB

I'm attempting to migrate a Windows XP installation using the instructions found on the virtualbox wiki page /wiki/Migrate_Windows

My first boots led to a mostly blank screen with a cursor in the upper left, not the blue screen crash that step 8 of the virtual box wiki instructions warn of. I was able to boot the VM into a linux live CD and access the file system of my virtual hard drive, and when I load Windows Recovery Manager on the virtual machine, that software recognizes that I have a Windows installation on my .vdi. I attempted to use the "fixboot" or "fixmbr" command failed to produce a change in behavior on subsequent boot attempts from the drive.

I decided to move on to step 9 of the Migrate Windows guide and attempt a non-destructive repair installation using a windows installation disc (specifically, en_windows_xp_professional_with_service_pack_3_x86_cd_x14-80428.iso).

After the CD image finished copying setup files to my disk image and reset the machine, I made the mistake of removing/unmounting the CD image. The crash "Guru Meditation 1155 (VINF_EM_TRIPLE_FAULT)" occurs only when the disc is "removed" and Virtual Box attempts to boot form the virtual hard drive - otherwise, the virtual machine sits on the "Press any key to boot from CD....." prompt and does nothing; very similar behavior to that was happening before I attempted any fixes.

I must be missing some obvious setting. Any and all suggestions on how to proceed would be appreciated. In the mean time, I'm performing a CHKDSK /R on the virtual disk from inside windows recovery console.

Re: VM will not boot from VDI/Guru Meditation during XP repa

Posted: 5. Nov 2015, 02:50
by GeorgeA
Sorry I forgot about this thread: last week, I ended up giving up on my first DD image, using VMWare's converter and changing the VMDK to a VDI with the "vboxmanage clonehd --format VDI."