Using Old vmware disk in VirtualBox

[wcndave]

I have a very old windows 2003 server vmware disk (vmdk).

When I try to create a VB guest, it accepts the disk location etc, however on boot up, all I get is a blank screen.

I can't see where any log files might be written, is that the first place to look?
Is there a requirement to convert the disk when it's using a rather old version of vmware?

It's vmware server 2.0.2 from 2008...

[socratis]

1. Start the VM. Not from a saved or suspended state (if you are in such a state, discard it). Clean start.
2. Take the steps required to generate/observe the error.
3. Shut down the VM (if it hasn't aborted by itself). Not suspended, not paused. Shut down. If you can't shut it down by normal means, close the VM window and select "Power off".
4. Right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager.
5. Select "Show Log..."
6. Save it (just the first log, VBox.log), ZIP it and attach it in your response (see the "Upload attachment" at the bottom of the form).

[wcndave]

Many thanks for your reply.

I have found the log, there doesn't seem to be anything obvious in it, this would seem the relevant part:

00:00:04.376929 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=1, bootseq=0231
00:00:04.377100 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Floppy 0 failed
00:00:04.377263 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=2, bootseq=0023
00:00:04.377595 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: CDROM boot failure code : 0003
00:00:04.377723 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from CD-ROM failed
00:00:04.377880 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=3, bootseq=0002
00:00:04.378136 VMMDev: Guest Log: BIOS: Booting from Hard Disk...
00:00:04.493550 VMMDev: Guest Log: int13_harddisk: function 15, unmapped device for ELDL=81
00:15:55.904810 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'SUSPENDING'

Attached file too.

Thanks again, Dave

[mpack]

Try enabling IO-APIC. VirtualBox defaults to having it off, VMWare defaults to having it enabled. XP (and Win2k3) will work with either one, but once the OS is installed it does not expect the feature to disappear.

Also, reduce the VM RAM to 1GB, or else free up more RAM on your host - 3GB is close to being your entire complement of available RAM on your host. An XP/Win2K3 guest really shouldn't need that much.

[wcndave]

I''ll try the first suggestions. regarding the second, I have 32GB ram on my PC, and it was running only chrome and Vbox, so I would expect that allowing 4GB is ok...

[socratis]

I''ll try the first suggestions. regarding the second, I have 32GB ram on my PC, and it was running only chrome and Vbox, so I would expect that allowing 4GB is ok...

But that's not what the log says:

00:00:01.330704 Host RAM: 16327MB total, 3237MB available

First of all you have 16GB on your host, not 32GB. Second, don't "expect", make sure. When you started the VM you had a little bit over 3GB available. Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc to launch the Task Manager on your host. See how much available memory you have. I bet you that Chrome is using plenty, mainly due to cache. Check the processes tab, sort them by memory, find the culprit.

[wcndave]

Mmm, not sure where the other 16GB has gone then. Also checked processes, and it's mostly things I can't control / turn off (well not easily), MS SQL, S indexing, Cortana, MS Host Services, rubbish like that.

Anyway, back on topic, thanks for the tip about IO-APIC, the server got as far as the loading screen now, which is a step forward, however then BSOD.

It doesn't seem to like that it's been moved, in that it complains about hard disks etc...




It then cycles around repowering, so a bit tricky to close the guest after BSOD and before reboot in order to get a good log file, however I think I have it. (attached)

Any further help would be greatly appreciated!

Dave

[mpack]

Stop 0x7B is a "where did my boot disk go?" crash, i.e. Windows boot manager is configured to look for a disk (by serial number) which no longer exists. It is a typical Windows disk imaging issue. I suggest that you search for previous discussions of it.

In XP/Win2K3 it can also mean that the boot code is looking for a disk controller that no longer exists. Did you run mergeide before imaging the Win2k3 drive?