Author: ptitusSubject: Avoid Blue Screen with VirtualBox
Posted: 13 May 2016 at 2:07pm
Hello... Problems capturing a snapshot with Oracle VirtualBox, resulting in a BSOD when the newly created VHD starts to load, may be avoided with this simple howto. This pertains only to a (probably not uncommon) scenario where a new computer is being used to host the image created on an older computer. The key difference frequently is that the new computer has a SATA controller for storage and the old computer has an IDE controller.
Anyone encountering this situation will likely discover the cause easily enough on their own, so these directions are for those too impatient to poke around in VirtualBox settings until they come across the obvious answer.
After creating the snapshot with Disk2vhd, go ahead and create a VM using VirtualBox. When you get to the part about the Hard drive, you select the vhd file by ticking off "Use an existing virtual hard drive file" and navigating to the location of the file. So far so good, but the VM will not boot. It will repeatedly crash to the blue screen. In this case, when trying to boot an IDE VM on a SATA host system, you first need to select the VM in Virtual Box, then click on "Settings". Select the settings for "Storage." Right away you can see the source of confusion. There are two IDE controllers listed: IDE and SATA. The image is being associated with the SATA controller. It needs to be associated with the IDE controller. So simply select the icon for the file associated with the IDE controller, the one labeled "Empty" and remove it using the minus sign icon at the bottom of the window. There are two plus icons and two minus icons, one each for the controller and the file, but the ones that are not relevant will be grayed out depending on what you have selected.
Repeat for the IDE controller itself (don't worry, you add it back later). Then remove the VHD image associated with the SATA controller by clicking the minus sign while that icon is selected. Finally remove the SATA controller.
Then, when the storage tree window is empty, you can click on the plus symbol and add a new IDE controller. Last, you select the plus symbol for the VHD icon which allows you to "Add Hard Disk" which leads to the next step "Choose existing disk" so you can now select your VHD file. That should do it.
Now when you try to start the VM, it should boot successfully.
I know this scenario is specific to storage controller conflicts between guest and host, and there are probably lots of other causes for images not booting that require different workarounds, but I figured I would share this solution in case it meets anyone's needs.
