[Solved] Windows XP Guest does not boot (Migrate from VM)

[der_reisende]

Hi!
I am migrating from VMWare to VirtualBox. With most of my machines I had no problem, but I have this one Windows XP machine that starts to boot but freezes as soon as the display driver wants to resize the screen (if I read the log correctly).
When I reboot the guest again, Windows sees that booting was not successful and asks what to do, but even the safe mode does not start, the machine freezes.
The last log line that is written, is
00:00:08.749127 GUI: UIFrameBufferPrivate::performResize: Size=720x400, Directly using source bitmap content


Host: Windows 10, Update 1511, 16 GB Memory
Guest: Windoxs XP Professional, 32 bit, 2048 MB Memory, 128 MB for display
VBox.log and VBoxHardening.log attached

How did I migrate? Create new VBox with same memory amount. Add existing .vmdk file as existing drive into IDE host controller, add optical drive and go.

Does anyone have any idea?

Thanks very much!
der_reisende

[mpack]

You don't have a hardening problem (exit code is 0), so please don't provide the hardening log unless we ask for one - though happily yours seems to compress very well.

Try enabling the I/O APIC in the VM settings.

Hopefully you removed the VMWare guest tools already, since those will not work in other VM platforms. You'll need to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. If you still have access to the original VMWare VM then it's also a good idea to run the MergeIDE registry update mentioned in the VirtualBox migration wiki. These registry changes tell XP that there's more than one IDE controller in the world - and incidentally I recommend moving the hd onto an IDE controller, not SCSI or SATA. You can install Intel SATA drivers later if you feel the need.

[der_reisende]

> Try enabling the I/O APIC in the VM settings.

that did the trick. D'oh! I read this before, but in my previous migrations this had already been (magically ) set, that's why I forgot it.

The other tricks I had tried before (remove VMWare tools, MergeIDE), did not change the behavior.

Thanks very much!!!!

Oh, btw: perhaps the article „minimum information needed for assistance“ should be changed. Right now, it says in red
*Note: Windows as host users with version newer than 4.3.12 need to post the VBoxStartup.log or VBoxHardening.log

[mpack]

Hmm. It should say "if asked to provide it". The referenced line is a late addition and I suspect dates from a time when there was a spate of hardening issues, so this was seen as higher priority.

VirtualBox has never had I/O APIC enabled as the default for XP, so it can't have been "magically enabled" if you created the VM in the same way last time. You must have done something differently, or forgot a step you did last time.

[der_reisende]

> has never had I/O APIC enabled as the default for XP

ah, that's the reason for the magic . The other VMs were W7, this was my first XP VM... This will also be the reason why I did not have to change the controller type to IDE, I was already wondering why I had to change it only in my first migrated VMs...

Again, thanks for your prompt and skilled help!!