Troubles importing VirtualBox 4 vmdk files

[Spinland]

I have two VMs running under VirtualBox 4, and just installed VMWare Fusion 3.1.2 and would like to migrate them.  In both cases I exported the machines to obtain vmdk files, then tried to install those files as new VMs under Fusion.  One VM is Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit) and the other VM is Ubuntu 10.10 (32 bit).  In the Win7 case I get a BSOD when attempting to boot, and then it tries again.  This cycle continues until I kill it.  In the Ubuntu case I get lots of error messages; it then allows me to log in and subsequently freezes with a black screen showing "Ubuntu 10.10" and four white dots.

Host machine is quad core i7 iMac 27" running Snow Leopard 10.6.5.

Is there some way to get VBox VMs migrated into Fusion that works?

Thanks in advance!

[continuum]

which disk-controller was used for those vmdks in VirtualBox ?

[Spinland]

SATA in both cases.

[continuum]

I assume you know that I do not ask for the controller of the host ... ?

Anyway - if the VirtualBox used SATA then you must patch the guests.
For the Windows 7 VM it is quite easy - read http://sanbarrow.com/p2v2008r2.html

[Spinland]

Correct, that was the drive type on both guest VMs.

I confess that link made no sense to me, but thanks for offering it.  I don't really understand what they're talking about with hot clones and such.

One thing I did do, based on your question, was to look at what VMWare wants; I saw it only seems to like IDE and SCSI.  I was able to convert the VirtualBox Ubuntu VM to use all IDE drives, re-export it, and then that one imported into VMWare with no problem.

I'm still stuck on the Win7/64 VM, though...does the fix involve doing a repair install over the VM using the original install disk?  I tried changing the SATA virtual drive to IDE from within VirtualBox but then it wouldn't boot at all even in VirtualBox.

Thanks again!

[Spinland]

Okay, this is strange.  This morning I tried the Win7 VM again, this time with the install disk in the drive.  For some reason it booted up in VMWare right away, and now is working just fine.  It's the same VirtualBox vmdk file I was using yesterday that wasn't working for me.

Very odd, but whatever. At least it's working now.

Thanks again!

[amusarra]

A few days ago I wrote on my blog a mini-tutorial on how to import the VMDK file VirtualBox 4 http://musarra.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/importing-virtual-machine-disk-vmdk-on-virtualbox-en

I hope you find it useful.

Bye,

Antonio.