virtualbox.org

Since English is a foreign language for me, I know that I am exposed to multiple errors of expression and understanding. Nevertheless I do my best to improve my command of English. For that reason I would like to ask you what made me deserving the expression "even if you were agreeable" that, as I was taught, suggests that I am not?
Of course, if my understanding is wrong, I beg your pardon for the question. Otherwise, was it due to my usage of the word "tinkering"?
Note please, if I do something that I don't understand well, for me it's "my tinkering". For that reason I was initially so reserved with respect to applying MergeIDE that seemed to me overwriting Registry keys and not only adding new ones. It's important for me to leave my physical XP system only as a source of disk images, excluding any patches or reconfigurations. But I totally agree with you that I can tinker with SILVER.VDI - notwithstanding that I have very weak competences in this respect.

Back to technical subjects.

1. Downloading the Evaluation copy of VBox, I was glad to have my personal physical XP system as probably challenging test case; up to now the case continue to challenge VBox. What interests me on longer term are appliances under VBox Enterprise licenses.

2. I don't see any reason that you waste your time to do anything beyond your role of this Oracle-sponsored forum Moderator. Within this role you
- approved my usage of Disk2Vhd,
- advised to apply MergeIDE,
- advised to use CloneVDI to convert VHD to VDI.
As I understood, from your perspective SILVER.VDI was ready to boot.
But it didn't boot.
Since VBox Manual - seems excellent, BTW - states that VBox supports XP guests on Win7 hosts, where is the reason of the failure?
In WinXP?
In Disk2Vhd?
In MergeIDE?
In CloneVDI?
In VBox?
Or at last, in Win7?
I don't see you as the person in charge of such investigation.
But I see the VirtualBox Team as potentially the most concerned by the case.
They and Microsoft should know tools to produce logs showing what failed during the boot.

3. As for your steps-to-follow indication concerning VM

... dump the extended partition to a raw file then convert the raw file to a VDI then you'd almost have a bootable disk: you'd just need to attach it to a VM and run fixmbr. CloneVDI has a feature that lets you dump a portion of a VDI as a raw file, and can make it a VDI again.
If this worked you would end up with a disk containing two primary partitions: just about every Linux has that, so I know for a fact that VirtualBox supports it.

thank you for it but I don't imagine practically how to follow it. Probably for that reason you doesn't seem sure of the result saying "If this worked ...".
The other indication

... would the app in question work if the executable folder was simply copied to a new XP installation? Many will, though you may have to manually set up file associations etc.

doesn't concern VM and the answer to the question it contains is "No". Those applications - because there are two of them - are out-dated client-server apps interconnected, via Registry, with obsolete database engines and data providers. The apps have to be upgraded (rewritten) before migrating to a new environment. I'm too busy to do that now.

Kind regards,
JK

jkomorowski wrote:I don't see you as the person in charge of such investigation.
But I see the VirtualBox Team as potentially the most concerned by the case.

Some facts, just to clear things in my head (and in general):

1. You happened to bump into the most knowledgeable user around these forums on the low-level details of such a problem.
2. This is a user forum. Not an official support forum.
3. There is no "investigation" going on. There is no "bug", no "error". I bet you that if you took your physical HD and stuck it in another computer, it would fail to boot as well.
4. You have a highly unusual setup, which BTW, you don't even remember how you created (and I quote) "inspired by a Web-aquainted Windows deployment expert". I've seen too many of those.
5. Even in the usual, normal setups, things don't always work. It's the nature of the game.
6. You want assurances that this is going to work. There aren't any. Mpack is trying his best to tell you that there is a chance of things might not working. Deal with it. Backup. He already pointed you to Acronis.

jkomorowski wrote:where is the reason of the failure?
In WinXP?
In Disk2Vhd?
In MergeIDE?
In CloneVDI?
In VBox?
Or at last, in Win7?

Any of them? But my best bet would be in the hardware changes that exist when you move from physical to virtual, i.e. in the XP configuration, that's why the MergeIDE was suggested.

Finally, and since this is a VirtualBox forum, another suggestion would be to try another virtualization program. VMWare and VirtualPC come to mind. Then we'll know for sure if this is actually a VirtualBox bug that requires further attention from VirtualBox users and developers alike.

Even presupposing a poor grasp of English I don't see how "even if you were agreeable" was remotely offensive. And that was already an attempt to correct your failure to understand what "direct knowledge" meant. Add to that your failure to understand any of the four suggestions offered and it seems that there's very little point in continuing this, so I'm done here.

@socratis
Despite the fact that our points of view diverge to some extent, I understand and respect the yours.
Moreover I totaly agree with your conclusion.
Nevertheless, being not enough competent in the field and rather upset by my two week P2V adventure, I will not follow your suggestion. I think that I should limit myself to less challenging cases.
Thank you very much for your post.


@mpack
There was no question of offence. I asked you

what made me deserving the expression "even if you were agreeable" that, as I was taught, suggests that I am not?

Since I didn't get an answer (at least to the above question), I asked an English gentleman to help me to understand the situation. Since he speaks French which is my usual but still foreign language, he solved the riddle immediately telling me that I am a victim of phenomenon called in French faux amis (literally: false friends).
English agreeable means "pleasing" that in French is agreable (with single "e"), but ... agreeable has another meaning, namely "person willing to agree". That second meaning, that I ignored, doesn't exist in French. For me English agreeable and French agreable were equivalents, meanwhile they are "false equivalents".
So I misunderstood your expression.
Since, by precaution, I begged your pardon already for such error, I have nothing more to add.

Kind regards to both of you,
JK