Boot an existing XP (Physical HD) install with VirtualBox

[japzone]

Personally, I think using VMWare vCenter Converter is the easiest way. The software is free and gives you a working VMDK. Then you can just use VirtualBox to boot the VMDK or convert it to a VDI first if you want a pure VirtualBox setup.

[impredario]

...

Has anyone encountered (& solved) the following error sequence when booting the VM?Clicking OK then brings up another error dialog, this time from lsass.exe:Clicking OK again brings up the first error dialog from services.exe.
Clicking OK a third time produces just a blank blue screen. The VM is unresponsive but using 80-90% of the host CPU. (The host machine has only 1 CPU).

I can boot the VM in Safe mode and Win XP in native mode no problem. No activation required when switching native/virtual, probably because my company has a corporate license.

... Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

It turns out the culprit was Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP), which I discovered by accident. After completely uninstalling SEP in native XP boot, the next reboot of XP as a VM worked fine.

I now need to install a different AV/malware package that is compatible with VB and meets company IT standards.

Just posting this update in case anyone has the same problem.

Btw, I did switch to the MBR method described by Aaron on his blog. It is simpler than the GRUB method, which doesn't work for some people because they don't have the /usr/lib/grub/*-pc/stage2_eltorito file. It also completely avoids the possibility of accidentally booting your Ubuntu as a VM inside itself, a big no-no!