virtualbox.org

I'm trying to migrate an existing Windows 10 physical machine to a new VM running on a Linux host. I used the Disk2vhd program to create a windows virtual hard disk file from the live physical windows hdd. Upon completion, on the Linux machine with/VirtualBox 5.x I created a new VM and selected "Use an existing virtual disk" and pointed it to the VHD file created. All worked just fine and passed all my tests (the machine was exactly like the physical source). Now that its time to migrate for the final time I created a new vhd exactly like I did previously, then on the Linux host in VirtualBox I deleted the old vm including files then created a new vm and defined it the same way as before.
Now when attempt to start the VM I see the windows logo display and that's it! It just hangs forever. I've got to kill the process to stop it.

Does anyone who may have experience doing this have any idea why this is so? My host machine is quite healthy having an i7-6700, 16gb ram and 2TB hdd.
Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas or even any other way to accomplish a p2v greatly appreciated.

Thanks

First, please get the terminology and the extension right. There is no such this as a "VDF" file. There is VDI, the native format for VirtualBox, and there is VHD, the old format used by Microsoft.

There is no "Disk2vdf" program.

So, could you edit your post and fix these errors if you would like to continue in a meaningful conversation, please.

Well excuse me socratis. I'm sure you never made an incorrect reference before either.
As you so eloquently suggested, I've edited my post to change all references of VDF (either case) to VHD (either case). But that still doesn't change the issue.
The Disk2vhd program creates the virtual hard disk file and Virtualbox still just sits there and goes no further.
What should be a relatively easy task has turned into a more complicated one.

Thanks for nothing. Any one else???

bobmct wrote:Well excuse me socratis. I'm sure you never made an incorrect reference before either.

bobmct wrote:Thanks for nothing. Any one else???

First of all, drop the attitude. Nothing good is going to come out of it, I promise. And I didn't even try to solve your problem, but you can always talk to my manager. Oh, wait...

Second, you should adjust your sensitivity meters. I didn't call you anything, I just pointed out that your message was incorrect and needed fixing before we could figure out whether you were talking about VDIs or VHDs. If we can't trust that you can describe the problem accurately in its most basic details, we won't be getting too far. Actually we might be heading in the wrong direction later on, so it's best if we set the rules early on.

Third, you ask if anyone has done it before. I'd say a lot (including myself), but I know of at least another person; you. You did it once and it worked, you did it a second time and it didn't. You should be looking at your notes, and if they don't exist, you should try to remember, and if that doesn't work, you should try again the procedure.

Fourth, we need to see a log of an unsuccessful start. Here's what you do:

1. Start the VM. Not from a saved or paused state. Clean start.
2. Take the steps required to generate/observe the error. Give it 5-10 minutes waiting for it to boot. Make sure all the disk/net activity has stopped.
3. Shut down the VM (if it hasn't aborted by itself). Not saved or paused. Completely 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. Select "Show Log..."
5. Save it (only the first VBox.log), ZIP it and attach it to your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form).

I would also like to see the "recipe" of the VM, the ".vbox" file:

1. Right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager. Select "Show in Finder/Explorer/Whatever".
2. ZIP the selected ".vbox" file and attach it to your response.

And finally, a complete description of the original computer, the "P" in the P2V. From amount of memory, to graphics, to network cards, to HD controllers (important), to audio cards, to ... name it. The closest you get to the original P's configuration, the better chances you have. Of course in the context of VirtualBox, i.e. I don't really care at this point about your motherboard's make, or the speed of your RAM.

Socratis: First, I'd like to apologize for my "attitude". No excuses as I've been here/there too often to have forgotten that

I've repeated my steps from the beginning to assure that I've done everything the same and I get the same result.
As requested I've created a new VM and selected an existing VDF and created it then started it. It cooked a few minutes, displayed the Windows logo and there is sat. I couldn't get control to close the machine so I had to wait for the message to close the process, which I did.

I then zipped up the files requested. A quick perusal through them did not show anything obvious to me but at that level I'm not sure what I'm looking for. There is also a file containing the hdwe as reported by my os. I believe it details all the items you mentioned (and more).

Hopefully there will be a clue as to what is occurring to help resolve this. And I do understand that it would be possible to do a clean install of Win 10 and reinstall programs and move all my files, but this P2V process creates a challenge.

Thanks for any help you would be willing to provide. I'll be sure to pay it back on this board (in other topics however).

bobmct

bobmct wrote:selected an existing VDF

Admit it. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?

Joking aside, your original computer looks like a standard, nothing extraordinary hardware-wise. I don't know what services the original was running that might be holding the boot process. With that said, let's look at the log...

VirtualBox VM 5.0.40_Ubuntu r115130 linux.amd64 (Apr 20 2017 06:58:05) release log

Your VirtualBox is in the 5.0.x series, you should try the 5.1.x series, they have a lot better compatibility with Win10. But that's not your main problem. The main problem is that you're using the distro's fork version of VirtualBox. You can either ask in their forums for help, or completely remove/uninstall/delete/purge their version and install the official version from the Downloads section of VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads).

I could pretty much stop here and wait for you to install a supported VirtualBox version, but since we're at it, you might as well take some preemptive actions as well.

00:00:04.313928 File system of '/home/sysop/VirtualBox VMs/Windows10.VHD' is ext4

VHD is quite a fragile format, so much so that even Microsoft (the inventor) moved to VHDX, a 2nd generation format that tries to solve some problems that the 1st generation was facing. The best thing you could do at this point is to use mpack's CloneVDI tool to create a VDI out of your VHD and use the VDI as the starting point for your VM.

00:00:04.147518   VNC (Version: 5.0.40 r115130; VRDE Module: VBoxVNC)
00:00:04.147523   Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (Version: 5.0.40 r115130; VRDE Module: VBoxVRDP)

When you update your VirtualBox installation, install one extension pack, I'm not sure if there's a conflict between them...

00:00:04.865904 GUI: 2D video acceleration is disabled

You should enable 2D (and 3D) acceleration. It will make things much smoother once you're up and running.

00:00:04.416200   NumCPUs           <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)
00:00:04.752079 CPUM: Physical host cores: 4

You could definitely afford another vCPU for your guest. Smoother sailing...

That's all for now. As I said, the Ubuntu fork prevents us from going any further until you get the official VirtualBox version. Try the latest 5.1.22 as of this writing...

Socratis and others:
Thanks all for the tips provided here. I admit, there is a lot of detail in this migration. For those interested I had to completely remove the Mint supplied VBox including the dkms support then add the official VBox downloads to my repositories. Once installed and up to date I was able to use the previously mentioned utility to create a vdfx format file then another utility to convert it to a vdi format. Finally that was moved into the VM folder and the VM started. It cooked a while to accommodate any hardware differences and finally it started normally. Voila~

Thanks again for the assist.

Great! Thanks for the feedback. I'll mark the thread as [Solved].

bobmct wrote:I was able to use the previously mentioned utility to create a vdfx format