MEPIS Community Forum

HI folks,
Just build a new PC i5 2500K (not overclocked)/ 16Gb ram / MSI P67A-G43 (B3) / 750Gb HDD.

I had previously used the HDD for a Debian linux installation (I think it was ETCH, but it might have been Lenny). I wiped all partitions except home and did an install of Mepis.

I forgot that I had a Virtualbox virtual machine in my home directory. I installed the latest Virtualbox with its extensions and guest additions and it recognized the old virtual machine! (way to go Virtualbox!!!) The XP guest hadn't been started in a while and there were a bunch of updates for XP that were downloaded and installed. (The VM was working fine before) Now when I start the VM, XP tries to start but goes through a cycle of spontaneous reboots (within the VM) and eventually gives me a screen which allows me to choose the "last known good configuration" (or something similar) and the VM boots. Is this an XP problem or a VM problem due to going from something in the Virtualbox 3 series to Virtualbox 4.1? If it is a Virtualbox problem, how do I correct it?

I have not yet setup USB devices on the VM, but, in the past I did have a shared folder between the VM and my home directory that worked just fine. Now, even after deleting and recreating the shared folder, I can't get the sharing to work. Any suggestions?

Many thanks,

Mark

Mark
Have used VB since it started way back when don't know if this will fix the problem but it may be worth a try as normally when you go from one machine to another it is the preferred method, since it appears you didn't do an upgrade from V3, but a fresh install of V4.

1. Suggest you might remove Virtualbox 4
2. install version 3 then run your XP client see if everything works.
3. If it does then use the export appliance option to export the client.
4. install VB 4 and use the import appliance option to import the XP client.

(I have used the export, import options to install the same XP clients on different machines and it has always worked.)
Then again it could be the difference in the Linux OS's that is the problem.

The only other option would be do a fresh install of XP on VB4.
Hope this helps.

Frank

I do seem to remember that the Import and Export function was really appreciated when it came out.

After more research I found that the symptoms that I described are due to my old installation using an AMD64 CPU and the new one using an Intel CPU. XP customizes itself for the CPU, so when I booted the VM, XP got, ummmmm, confused?
Thanks for the help,
Mark