Virtualbox ose impressions and floppy problem

[rolf]

<backstory> I've been switching the motherboard from Asus P5Q Deluxe to Foxconn P45A-S (Intel Socket 775) and back, due to problems with, maybe, memory and hangs at "Initializing usb controller" at POST. I think I've got it sorted, running the P5Q with 4G new A-DATA DDR2-800 (2x2G). However, in the process, I lost the ability to boot my XP PRO installation, which I need for, at least, an upcoming Go-To-Meeting event that only works on Windows.

Part of this environment is that all 5 disks are SATA, with AHCI capability, which I use but that causes problems for XP. One offshoot is, when booting the XP CD to attempt a repair installation, the poor OS tells me, "Setup cannot find a previous version of Windows...". This can be work-arounded with the F6 insertion of the mobo sata controller drivers from floppy, which I have managed to do and perform the repair installation on the XP installation I've got on disk. At least, the replacing system files from CD part; I've yet to try to boot into that. During this process, I thought to try to find an alternate solution in my first attempt to install a virtual machine,

I am impressed with the polish of this product, the ease of use of the wizards, and the documentation. Nonetheless, I can't duplicate the analog work-arounded installation of XP from CD to the virtual machine, created easily with the wizard and the defaults. I see, at least, Fearless Leader displays proficiency with virtual machines, so I ask here.</backstory>

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[rolf@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa|grep virtualbox
dkms-virtualbox-3.2.10-69.1mib2010.1
virtualbox-3.2.10-69.1mib2010.1
virtualbox-guest-additions-3.2.10-69.1mib2010.1
[rolf@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa|grep vbox
x11-driver-input-vboxmouse-3.2.8-69.1mib2010.1
x11-driver-video-vboxvideo-3.2.8-69.1mib2010.1
dkms-vboxadditions-3.2.10-69.1mib2010.1

I've got two SATA optical drives, also, and, to make it easier for Windows, took an old ATAPI drive off the shelf, hooked it up to an IDE cable snaking out the side of my box. I used this + a driver floppy to start the repair installation to hard disk, tried the same procedure in Virtualbox. I like how it works, so many failures are experienced in quicker fashion w/o all the reboots! I like the interface but the first problem was XP setup could not find my floppy for the F6 part. There was not much at Google but I clicked into the discovery that I could add a floppy controller to the "Storage" part of Settings, not sufficient, then add the actual fd0 to that controller, FTW!

Now, XP setup does not complain about no floppy. The busy light on the floppy drive is solid on from the start of the XP machine. I press F6 at the beginning, press S when given the choice, with the floppy disk pre-loaded or if I wait to be prompted by setup to insert the floppy, the outcome is the same: I press Enter to tell setup my floppy is ready, the screen flickers, suggesting the keyboard input is recognized, but no reading of the floppy occurs, there is no next screen with a choice of driver files to load, the busy light is unblinking from the beginning of starting the XP virtual machine.

I have tried unmounting the floppy device in the menu but, then, it is not recognized. I remount and the failure to go forward persists. Will any wisdom be forthcoming? Pannekakers also welcome. Thanks.

[viking60]

Uh I can give you the pannekaker but this clearly is b1o stuff. b1o get to work here
In general a lot of disks combined with a kernel update generates a good opportunity to read up on Grub. Fascinating how it treats disks completely different from Linux Floppy is actually history since more that 5 years (one generation) here, so I forgot all about them.

Now Virtualbox can read them as you state - I would imagine in the same way as a cd rom. So did you ask a question? Yes! Did I answer it? No!. B1o where are you!

[dedanna1029]

To start from scratch, a couple of very simple things come to mind, and think it may be okay to get them out of the way, to be on the safe side:

1) Did Windows shut down cleanly last time it was up?

2) Are you sure you don't have a hardware failure in the floppy drive? A solid light on the drives sometimes denotes this, but not always.

[rolf]

I like floppies. They're magical, just grinding away and you can update your BIOS, test your memory, run a grub shell, many things. My floppy drive works, as I said, "This can be work-arounded with the F6 insertion of the mobo sata controller drivers from floppy, which I have managed to do and perform the repair installation on the XP installation I've got on disk." So, it seems to be some more arcane bugaboo.

[gnuuser]

its easier in most cases to use the original master drive as a slave and a new one as master with a new installation . you can then recover files and settings from the slave drive.
with sata drives you can switch data cables or change the boot order in bios.

any time you change a motherboard you are creating a major kibosh to its original setup because nothing matches the config files that were created by the os
minor differences are usually worked around during the boot process, but major changes can cause a kernal panic or in windows case failure to complete boot sequence
I usually back up data before making changes and reinstall the os clean and restore data from the backup!

[rolf]

Thanks, but I had Mandriva working on both motherboards w/o any special precautions. I am back to the original board, where XP had a home, and I've done a repair install (see first post) to the first reboot but it crashes out to reboot before loading, in safe mode, also. I have copied off some not very important stuff from that partition and just might try to do a new installation, there. However, I am curious about getting virtualbox to work, if I can solve the floppy conundrum.

[gnuuser]

you'll probably solve it.
Ive got faith in ya.
sometimes you have to step back and look from a different angle

[rolf]

Of the variety of issues covered in this thread, I think the XP installation is solved. F6 installation of the SATA controller drivers from floppy is needed for XP to see the disks attached to them. Although one of the drivers I choose to load is the intel AHCI SATA driver, I had set SATA mode to IDE in BIOS, just in case. From there, the installer proceeds to present the target partition in alien Windows terminology but, also, clearly identifies it as one of my two NTFS partitions with a distinctive size that singles it out to me. After formatting, installation was relatively straightforward for this Windows newbie. I might have been successful with the repair installation if I had let it complete the first reboot instead of shutting down and trying to return to it via the Windows entry in Grub. Maybe not. What was a bit confusing is that, leaving the XP CD in and not pressing "any key to boot from CD" seems to be the way to proceed with the installation but I didn't see any message or instruction to that effect. Anyway, the tangential issue seems ok, now.

On the Virtualbox OSE front, there is some progress. I have tried adding another machine and accepting the default dynamically growing file for the virtual installation, which is said to be slower. There was no change in results, floppy light stays on and XP Setup will not load from it when I press Enter, as prompted. Possibly, there is some hardware fault that is triggered only by OSE but idk.

However, there is another facility in OSE, in the Storage module of Settings for the machine, the floppy device has a little button to the right to "Open Virtual Media Manager",

That dialog is looking for a .img file so, guessing, I did:

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$ dd if=/dev/fd0 of=info/xp/intel.img

and selected that for a virtual floppy. That worked and Setup saw the driver files, I selected the two that worked for the hard disk install. Sadly, as I had seen in the hard disk installation, Setup tells me it can find no previous installation of Windows and I need to insert a valid XP installation disk, which is already in the drive, of course. I switch to the other of two SATA optical drives and Windows tells me it can't read the CD, it is corrupt or not valid, a message I had seen before, also.

My next move is to re-connect the ATAPI optical drive to the IDE controller and try loading XP from that. I had disconnected it, don't remember if it is what I used for the successful XP installation to hard drive but is something to try. I need some pannekakers.

[viking60]

Hm I think I copied my XP CD image to the harddisk and installed it on Virtualbox. I might have let the CD drive "through" and done it from there. But I usually just hook the image up to the VB CD drive. ....
I also set far more than the 8 Giga because the "expanding" stuff only works UP TIL 8 Giga. Also I reserve at least half of the memory for Win. .....

[rolf]

Yes, using the ATAPI drive brings no improvement. I'll follow your clues and report back, thanks.

[viking60]

Here is a pic of my settings (for what it is worth):

And here is Win XP in Mandriva VB

[jkerr82508]

The SATA drivers should not be needed in the VM, if all the virtual drives are IDE. (The wizard sets them up as IDE for XP.)

If at any time setup says that it cannot find the CD, make sure that the host drive is still "connected" to the VM - use Devices in the VM's menu.

Jim