Boot an existing XP (Physical HD) install with VirtualBox

[ciucca]

I still can't figure out where you got those numbers from, but changing the biosHeads to 240 did the trick for me. I left the cylinders alone because I couldn't find any way to get fdisk to report 240 heads so I wasn't sure what the right value was, but it doesn't seem to matter. So a big thank you from me.

I'm on a T42, BTW, and I think this will fix it for people who were getting the corrupted screen after selecting Windows from Grub too. Depending on how I did it, I either got a disk read error or the corrupted screen before, so I think the underlying problem is the same.

Thanks to both of you guys!

After creating the .vmdk file the following were not in the file:

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders="1024"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads="255"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors="63"

I added them in the file, now I can get past the "disk read error" issue. I have a thinkpad R40. On to the next problem

Thanks again!

[Sand Lee]

Updated tutorial to include the possible "disk read error" workarounds noted by ciucca and borikru. Thank you.

[dvd_it]

Hi!
nice guide!
I tried it to mount my debian (I don't use win...) but i get: "Error17: Cannot mount selected partition"
do you have any idea?
d


(I searched on this thread but there are lots of comments and it's quite messy to find out a hint on this specific problem; so i'm sorry if someone already asked for this)

[soaenator]

hi

first thanks, great tutorial even though i havent got booted into my virtualXP i call it

i get error right after i select windows in grub:

Error 15 File Not Found

Press any key....

i bet that there is something with my menu.lst...it looks like this:

title           Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root            (hd0,0)
makeactive
savedefault
chainloader     +1

i have completely went through your tuto but i dont know what have i done wrong.
i was thinking maybe that command:

sudo usermod -G disk,vboxusers -a `whoami`

should there be after whoami my actuall $USER ??

thanks

[soaenator]

aha ok i got around that problem i have forgot to remove savedefault from menu.lst
then i got corrupted screen so i used that read disk error solution.
So i could get past that, which got me to, select my virtual machine and then it showed me a logo just for a second when a BSOD appeared which then restarted virtual machine.

anyone know what to do with BSOD during loading windows screen?

BTW will i be able to boot my windows natively again? i have the hw profiles. So i hope yes.

my system is intrepid on thinkpad t42p (2373-ktu) with ide hdd and have virtualbox-ose 2.0.4

[cnkbrown]

At tutorial step 4, my driver choices shows only "disk". Where would I get the "Standard Dual channel PCI IDE controller"? I have a Dell E6400.

[nsfnd]

Hi everyone, thx for all the info.

Ive followed through steps and managed to run my existing xp on VirtualBox.
However its darn slow I can tell just by watching the boot, its because of slow disk reading.
And my cpu usage is at %100 on one of the cores whole time starting with boot.

Im using nvidia's fakeraid on my system.

Some info;
Ubuntu 32bit-jaunty
ACPI, IO APIC, VT-x/AMD-V on.
Made grub.iso to auto boot to xp.

Tried with both IDE and Sata options on virtualbox hdd settings, slow with both.

Any thoughts?

[dragos240]

Can anyone help me boot into win 7 RC? I got it to boot into the system and it said:

STARTING WINDOWS, but then vbox aborted .

[zonemikel]

Hello everyone,


Its kinda hard to read through 11 pages of posts.

I got the grub iso to load and such but when i select my winxp partition (or any) from the grub menu i get "error 15 file not found".

Why would it work in the normal system but not in it's iso mode ? For me the "savedefault" was always commented out so im not sure if that is the problem.

## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options
## can be true or false
# savedefault=false 

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title        Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
root        (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader    +1 

Anyone have any idea what is wrong ? Its like it does not even load the right boot location. Obviously its not loading the mbr for my windows partition or something. But my windows partition is located on /dev/sda1 or in (hd0,0) .... thats the same config i have when i start my pc and normal dualboot always works.

thanks

[dragos240]

Hello everyone,


Its kinda hard to read through 11 pages of posts.

I got the grub iso to load and such but when i select my winxp partition (or any) from the grub menu i get "error 15 file not found".

Why would it work in the normal system but not in it's iso mode ? For me the "savedefault" was always commented out so im not sure if that is the problem.

## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options
## can be true or false
# savedefault=false 

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title        Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
root        (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader    +1 

Anyone have any idea what is wrong ? Its like it does not even load the right boot location. Obviously its not loading the mbr for my windows partition or something. But my windows partition is located on /dev/sda1 or in (hd0,0) .... thats the same config i have when i start my pc and normal dualboot always works.

thanks

Trust me, the savedefault is the issue.