Virtualbox crashing

MikeHunt79 · 8 Dec 2008 at 22:46

A while back I had a few virtualbox machines set up to use iplayer and 4od.

These worked great so I kept the hard disk images - they are .vdi files

Now, I missed spooks tonight, so I thought I'd boot one of my machines and use iplayer to download the episode, but I've found Windows XP crashes (bluescreens) on boot under VB.

Now, I was wondering is this because I'm using a new version of VB as I don't know what version I used to create the original hard disk image files?

ChrissyT88 · 8 Dec 2008 at 23:30

Have you made sure to keep all of the options the same in virtualbox? I dont think it would be so picky as to BSOD just because of a different version - i booted a 'dual core' VMware virtual machine on virtualbox and it worked fine (took a while though!). I seem to recall that some of the check boxes in the virtualbox menus (particularly the advanced settings) state that they should not be unchecked once an OS has been installed as it will lead to errors. I dont have virtualbox on this machine anymore, so i cant look for the options, but checking boxes and seeing if it works may be a good idea.

I would also try and make sure that you have allocated the same amount of RAM as before? Dont know if that would make a difference, but it could be worth a try... Theres nothing else running at the same time that is particularly CPU hungry? I guess if starved of cpu cycles, the VM would crash as a real windows OS would - could be worth checking.

MikeHunt79 · 8 Dec 2008 at 23:56

It just doesn't boot windows, it tries to boot, bluescreens, reboots, then offers to boot into "safe mode" which doesn't work either.

I'll try changing the advanced options, perhaps disabling network etc.

I've made a new virtual machine, and it works fine so it's not my PC causing problems...

bledd · 9 Dec 2008 at 09:16

maybe it's all different hardware from an old vbox?

MikeHunt79 · 9 Dec 2008 at 16:31

My host machine is exactly machine, but I think that because I'm using a newer version of VB, it doesn't play ball with hard disk images made in an older version of VB.

I'll try getting an older version of VB and see if that works...

bledd · 9 Dec 2008 at 16:34

to save the hassle, i'd just use the newest version and quickly install xp on it

i've not had a problem using newer vbox versions tbh... i use vbox in work

MikeHunt79 · 9 Dec 2008 at 16:41

bledd. said:
to save the hassle, i'd just use the newest version and quickly install xp on it

i've not had a problem using newer vbox versions tbh... i use vbox in work

Yep this is what I done in the end, made a new machine and used an ISO to install - XP installs very quickly this way.

I think there's a utility that can extract files from VDI files also, if not I'll just mount them as a 2nd drive, as there's still some files I need from my old VDI files.

bledd · 9 Dec 2008 at 18:20

if you do know of a extraction tool, let me know, would be handy to quickly mount them in windows at times..

MikeHunt79 · 9 Dec 2008 at 18:49

Will do - I remember seeing something over at the VirtualBox forums a while back, but I have a feeling it didn't work too well...