Virtual machine runs but XP partition no longer boots

[ruggedtextile]

Hi,

After a couple of months of running an XP virtual machine on an OpenSuse 10.3 host, I've suddenly discovered a problem.

The machine was originally setup to dual boot from a partitioned HD. XP in partition 1 and Suse in partition 2. Since then I've used the XP partition almost exclusively via VirtualBox running in 'raw hard disk mode' as described in section 9.9 of the manual.

The VM is still running fine in this mode, but I've noticed today that booting into the XP partition itself (i.e. after a full restart of the machine) now fails. Windows attempts to boot but dies saying NTLDR not found.

Checking the XP partition back in Suse shows that the ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini files are all present and boot.ini at least looks correct. I tried running the MergeIDE tool from this page of the wiki:

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

but still the same error. I realise this is more of an XP problem than a VirtualBox problem (since it runs fine in the VM!), but can anyone give any hints as to what might have gone wrong and how to fix it?

Thanks in advance

AlexG

[kestrel1]

A bit strange that it still boots to the VM.
What I normally do if I get this error in XP is to boot from the XP CD & enter the recovery console.
From there type:

Code: Select all

chkdsk /r

This will run checkdisk & should repair the damaged file. I can take a while to run through & you may notice that it will get to about 75% then drop back to 50% for a while, but it will continue & finish. This doesn't always work, but it has for me nine times out of ten.
Maybe the VM doesn't need to use NTLDR, not sure of that though only guessing.