[Solved] Can't acess an old lubuntu virtual machine on windows PC

[PedroN]

I recently formatted my windows 10 pc but saved a lubuntu virtual machine that I had on it in an external drive. The problem is that I changed the windows user name (and consequently the user file name), so now I can't access the virtual machine as it is looking for data in a folder that no longer exists. Is there any way that I can change the directory in which virtualbox will look for my virtual machine?

Thanks in advance!

[mpack]

What is in the VM folder? Show a screenshot please. If you have all the files then you can just copy the VM folder to a convenient location (ideally not an external drive) then double click the .vbox file.

[PedroN]

Recently I changed everything to the following path

C:\Users\Pedro\VirtualBox VMs\Lubuntu_2016

Sorry for all the stuff in the screenshots that is in portuguese.

[mpack]

Well, the cause of the error is clear - you renamed the folder to "Lubuntu_2016", and your must have fiddled with this VM in the past, because it has an absolute path embedded in the media register.

If you zip the .vbox file and attach the zip here, I'll fix the problem for you.

[PedroN]

Thank you so much! I put the .vbox-prev file in the zip too in case it is needed.

[mpack]

Here is the fixed version.

No, the ".vbox-prev" is not required. That is just a copy of the ".vbox" from a previous session.

For future reference, you should try to avoid having a VM access a VDI file located outside of the VM folder. If you do so then the manager must store the complete file path to that file, and if you then move the file then the link is broken - as happened here. Also you should never move VM files around after you've told VirtualBox where they should be found.

[PedroN]

Thank you so much for all your help and advice. WIthout you I would probably never be able to open this virtual machine again.

[mpack]

Thanks for reporting back. I'm going to take your last post to mean that the problem is solved.