Windows XP won't boot; fixboot hoses drive

[ezyang]

Here are the steps I have taken to migrate Windows XP to VirtualBox.

1. Boot original machine with clonezilla. Save NTFS partition with Windows/documents to image.
2. Boot virtual machine with Windows XP Install CD, let the installer format the drive as NTFS, then exit
3. Boot virtual machine with clonezilla. Restore NTFS partition to the created partition USING reloc-img. The move is basically from /dev/sda2 to /dev/sda1.

At this point, a boot should work, but when I reset all I get is a blank screen. Hm.

4. Boot virtual machine with Windows XP Recovery CD. Get into console. Console seems to work, and I can list directories. Run fixboot.

Reboot, and I get a read disk failure, not a blank screen. Hmmmm.

5. Boot virtual machine with Windows XP Recovery CD. Get into console. Cannot read the disk.

Great. I just hosed my Windows installation. I've tried this twice with the exact same results.

Anyone have any idea why this may be happening, and how to fix this? I have applied the registry fixes as per MergeIDE, and VMware converter appears to be able to migrate XP (but I would really prefer not to have to run VMware since it's soooo slow, also, loading a vmware disk seems to hang VirtualBox.)

Thanks!

[TerryE]

ezyang, do you mind going back to your requirements and discussing these

1. What is your starting config: MoBo, chipset, RAM and HDD/partition setup. I am assuming your OS is XP. Is this correct
2. What is your end-point config: Again MoBo, chipset, RAM and HDD/partition setup. Again I am assuming your guest OS is XP. What is your host OS?
3. Are you intending dual boot support as well as Host OS + Guest XP OS?

There are lots of issues of data sharing and integrity. Basically there is a hierarchy of data on the XP system:

• Programs and OS related stuff that has no personal value (apart from the inconvenience of losing you configuration)
  • Some of this configuration is specific to host boot
  • Some is specific to VM boot
• There are temporary files which the OS needs to write to in order to work, but other than that you don't care about them
• There is your personal / business data (email folders, documents, family pictures),... that you really don't want to lose and that you probably want to access from all three modes: bare XP, new host, guest OS.
• There is copy and temporary material that you keep locally for convenience but is recreatable. (CD RIPs, Pod casts, ...)

You need to think how you are going to get the access that you want in each OS environment. So for example you don't need routine access to the XP OS stuff from the host OS environment, but you do need access to your XP personal data. You need to think this all through before your start your migration.

For example, if you are going to dual boot your XP then you need to keep your C drive as a raw partition and you will need two profiles. You must mount this in your XP system so you will not be able to see its contents from your host OS unless the VM is running. Hence you will want to move your personal data onto a separate (D) partition from the system image. If you want to mount your D partition in your host OS you that you have access to this all of the time, then the XP system must (i) mount this directly in the case of native boot; (ii) access this as an NTFS share from the host as a guess VM boot.

There is a lot more to discuss but only if you are interested. So I will pause for now.

[ezyang]

Hello,

I will find the system configurations shortly, once I get home and have access to the machines.

As for the access requirements, here's my situation:

I currently have three computers; a laptop and two desktops. I will be moving soon, and I can only take one desktop with me, so I've been pondering how to perform this migration--virtualization seems perfect for the task.

The old desktop (the one I'd leave behind) is presently a dual-boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu. I don't particularly care for the Ubuntu install, as I didn't actually do anything interesting there, but I do care about the Windows XP install, especially for the application/system configuration. Otherwise I would have just copied my user folder to the new system and been done with it--in fact, I've already migrated the most important information off that computer; the only reason I keep it around is just in case I forgot something.

As such, there is no need for raw partitions; a virtual disk image will do just fine, and I have no need for a dual-boot. I have no problem with booting up the virtual machine when I need to access that data; that is what I do already with the physical machine. So please, go on!

(A quick aside: my laptop, which I was attempting to virtualize a dual-boot, is a different story, but since the master partition is bjorked that quest has been tabled for now. What you are speaking about is very very important in this case; I've already taken steps to make they /windows directory swappable between a samba and a ntfs mount. But as I said, I can't continue any further until my partition table is fixed *and* VirtualBox stops complaining about overlapping partitions (VirtualBox's complaints about my partitions is what got my partition table into this sorry state today). The plan here is to clonezilla Vista/Ubuntu off (both of which I care greatly about), repartition, and then restore the images. Needless to say, a risky proposition. What would be nice is if I could use VirtualBox to test the backups, but something like that is only feasible for Ubuntu. The rest is a leap of faith for my backups... ouch.)

[ezyang]

Original system specs:
Motherboard/Base Board: Dell Computer Corp, Product 0G1548 version A00
Chipset (I assume this is VGA controller, PCI bridge, etc): Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM
HDD/partition setup:

Code: Select all

1 32.9MB primary fat16
3 206MB primary ext3 (linux /boot partition)
2 18.9GB primary ntfs (boot, Windows partition)
4 20.9GB extended
5 1045MB logical linux-swap
6 19.8GB logical ext3 (linux / partition)

New system specs:
Motherboard: ASUS M2N61-AX (it's a Dell Inspiron 531)
Chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 Le
HDD/partition setup: three partitions, 47MB (I dunno. I guess Dell partition?), 10GB (recovery partition) and 288.04GB (Boot).
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium, OEM

[TerryE]

OK, in terms of your old system, I assume that the only thing that you are interested in is your 18.9GB primary partition which is your Active XP boot partition.

Your new machine is a Vista box. I personally think that MS should be shot for encouraging users to having one mega partition, but I assume that you want to live with that. Your choice.

So what you seem to be trying was initially to bootstrap your virtualisation via an ubuntu install on your old box. Now really all you seem to want is a working copy of your XP system as a VM under your Vista system. Ubuntu is nowhere in this picture, so there's no point in introducing it.

I think that VMware converter dicks around with the HAL, drivers and installs VMware tools, but I am a bit out of date on this, so I may be wrong.

You do have a DR backup of you XP system. This means that you can safely make the mergeIDE changes, swap the XP NT kernel, etc and leave the XP system native bootable, so that if the worst comes to the worst you can recover it. Have you tried just setting up a 20GB static VDI on your Vista system and loading it with a copy of your tweaked 18.9GB XP boot partition and taken it from there? (I would normally suggest a dynamic VDI, but there have been a flurry of posts about problems using dynamic VDIs on Vista, so I would side step this whole issue and use a static VDI for now.) As you say you will need to boot your XP VM from a recovery CD to run fixmbr / fixboot, and also change your boot.ini to force the safeboot flag until you've completed the bootstrap.

[ezyang]

Your new machine is a Vista box. I personally think that MS should be shot for encouraging users to having one mega partition, but I assume that you want to live with that. Your choice.

Hehe. Partitions are a little too easily gone wrong for me, which is why I haven't done it to my "home-base" computer.

So what you seem to be trying was initially to bootstrap your virtualisation via an ubuntu install on your old box. Now really all you seem to want is a working copy of your XP system as a VM under your Vista system. Ubuntu is nowhere in this picture, so there's no point in introducing it.

Yep. Ubuntu was the warm-up round, and I passed it. Windows XP is the obstacle course. Windows Vista is the nightmare.

Have you tried just setting up a 20GB static VDI on your Vista system and loading it with a copy of your tweaked 18.9GB XP boot partition and taken it from there?

I haven't tried a static VDI, so I suppose that's the next step.

As you say you will need to boot your XP VM from a recovery CD to run fixmbr / fixboot, and also change your boot.ini to force the safeboot flag until you've completed the bootstrap.

Ah ok; I've been fixmbr'ing or fixboot'ing, but not doing both. Unfortunately, while fixboot has stopped hosing the drive, I'm no closer to booting. Adding /safeboot to BOOT.INI appeared to have no effect.

[TerryE]

I am not sure I can help anymore at the moment. If you do want to discuss something specific then please come back here. I am tracking this topic.

[muganga]

I have a similar but simpler problem.

XP Boot disk 20Gb, hosted on Windows 7.
Copy virtual disk (properly using VBoxMange)
Try to run up XP on copied Virtual Disk
Just get blank screen,
Second attempt Windows recognises a problem and asks if I want to boot in Safe mode
This gets to mup.sys and freezes.

Any thoughts?

It used to work fine on an XP host.

M

[ezyang]

For the record, I gave up. I never got it to work, and have not tried since.

[TerryE]

Are you sure that your VMs are identical? This will occur if you switch IDE controllers for example.