Reinstall patches (Service packs) and updates.
It will basically reinstall windows and configure it for your new hardware (virtual hardware). Go through until you get to the select a partition, select the existing partition, and choose “repair”. Shutdown the virtual machine and boot up from a windows CD. Depending on your license you might need to re-activate Windows. If it just works install guest additions and you are done. It may “just work”, or you may get a BSOD. Once it is created, go in and turn on “Enable IO APIC”, select the # of processors you want etc. Make a new virtual machine, using the drive you just added with the media manager. Then use the media manager in VirtualBox to add the newly converted drive. To list available disks and to show the number of bytes under Total Size. To determine the same information on a Mac OS X host, you do Note, if you use fdisk -l in Linux you can see how many bytes each drive is to supply this parameter. If you are converting from the drive, you need to useĬat /dev/sdg | VBoxManage convertfromraw stdin OutPutFile.vdi NUMBEROFBYTES VBoxManage convertfromraw ImageFile.dd OutputFile.vdi If you are converting from the image, the syntax is just Use VBoxMange convertfromraw to convert the image or to copy from the drive you pulled from the windows machine. If making an image, DO NOT image just the partition, this will not work! Run the MergeIDE utility as mentioned above on existing windows machine.Įither pull the drive from the windows machine or copy the data with a low level image tool (like dd) to a USB drive or other removable media. This should work for Win2k Vista and Windows 7 as well, but it's untested. I created virtual disk with these instructions: and not a bug.I couldn't take the computer with me so I had only HDD. in the location box at the bottom of the "optical disks" panel would suffice ? And maybe in red to catch peoples eyes? Or may leave the "Remove" option active but respond with an explanation when clicked-on? Just something to help the user understand the "remove" option is grayed out on purpose. Maybe a few words like : File referenced in a snapshot/saved state and cannot be Removed. 3b) Set the VM to boot the ISO: In the Virtual Machine settings in Virtual Box, go to 'Storage' and click on the CD drive (or, if you dont have the option, add an optical drive under the IDE controllers). All I saw was that it referenced a file that I had deleted and thought VBox should allow me to remove it when I went to the virtual media manager, and it seemed like a bug when it wasn't an option. 3a) Disable Acceleration: In the Virtual Machine settings in Virtual Box, go to 'System', 'Acceleration', and disable any checkboxes. The VDIs include the most popular Linux distros, and a few obscure ones, too. I guess my brain hasn't done it often enough to memorize it. OS Boxes OS Boxes is a handy site listing nearly 60 different virtual disk images. I've been using the product for years and did not know that. The feature that optical disk files that are referenced cannot be removed after being deleted is not obvious to everyone. it's that I think a few more words that could encapsulate what you told me would help. It's not the existing wording that is bad.