[Solved] Failed to start a moved VM

[Tacuabe]

I have just purchased a brand new Dell XPS 13 9350 ultrabook (with a 256 SSD) and moved three of my four Windows VMs via Google Drive (which I use as backup). The new machine entire disk was used to install Lubuntu 16.04 LTS AMD64 without problem. I did have to downgrade screen resolution from the original 3200 x 1800 px to 1360 x 768 as in most programs the lettering was so tiny that become unreadable.

Two of these machines are Windows XP and just copying the entire folder from my old Samsung (using lubuntu 14.04 LTS, i386) produced flawless operation. The remaining machine is a Windows 7 Pro guest and refuses to start at all. I get the following error message:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows 7 Pro.

The VM session was closed before any attempt to power it on.

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: SessionMachine
Interface: ISession {7844aa05-b02e-4cdd-a04f-ade4a762e6b7}

I checked that the original files were indeed present and also copied them to a different named folder in the SSD. I remembered to change the path in VBox, tried again and got the same error message once more.

Comparing the files of the XP VMs with those of the W7Pro I noticed that there are two extra files named: Windows 7 Pro-linux1.12.vbox and Windows 7 Pro-linux1.12-vbox-prev. These two I have never seen before.

I will much appreciate if anyone can explain what's happening and maybe suggest a solution.

Thanks a lot

[Perryg]

Post the guests log file ( as an attachment ). Right click on the guest in the Main Manager then click show log. Save and post as an attachment. Compress if it is too large to post.

[Tacuabe]

Tnaks for the suggestion. I am attaching the required file.

[Perryg]

00:00:01.762819 ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80bb0004) aIID={872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed} aComponent={ConsoleWrap} aText={VM cannot start because the saved state file '/home/hector/VirtualBox-VMs/Windows 7 Pro/Snapshots/2016-09-13T02-44-24-325793000Z.sav' is invalid (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND). Delete the saved state prior to starting the VM}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0

The suggestion to fix your issue was given in the log file, and I believe it is also given when you try to start the machine. It appears that you transported the machine in a saved state and not shut down. Use the Discard icon in the main manager to discard the saved state and see if it will start after that.

[Tacuabe]

YESSS! Discarding the saved state did the trick and my VM is now working fine. Just to satisfy my curiosity, what are those .vbox files with linux1.12 inserted in their names? Never seen the like before and the XP VMs do not have them.

[Perryg]

Just backup files from VBox.

[socratis]

Just a little bit more detail to what Perryg said. The .vbox files are simply XML files that describe the VM settings. These settings, depending on what options they "cover", have an internal version number. You can see it if you open a .vbox file with a text editor. For example right now we're in version 1.15 and if you open a newly created VM you'll see the first line:

• <VirtualBox xmlns="http://www.virtualbox.org/" version="1.15-macosx">

The "macosx" part in this example, after the version, shows the OS that the VM was created under. If there is a need to upgrade the XML version number, VirtualBox makes a backup of the .vbox file with the version number appended in its name.