XP VM won't boot get a black screen with a small cursor

[mmarinho]

My XP VM/Mac OS hung so I had no choice but to force a power down by holding the power button until the laptop turned off. This has happened before. But now my VM won't start. When I run it all I see is a black screen with a small cursor on the left of the screen. Nothing happens after that. Right before this happens I see the normal vmware bootup logo and then what looks like a corrupted image that quickly disappears. No matter what I do (power down, restart) no progress is made. I did see the following in one of the vmware logs thinking that maybe this is a resolution issue:

Jul 22 19:39:12.829: vmx| DICT --- GLOBAL SETTINGS

Jul 22 19:39:12.844: vmx| Host display topology 5120x3200.

Jul 22 19:39:12.844: vmx| SVGA using 5120x3200.

I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.5. Any ideas?

-Manny

[WoodyZ]

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?

Refer to the following MS KB Article...

How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP

Also in conjunction with getting into safe mode the normal key is F8 however if your have problems with that...

Try using the "fn" key, e.g fn+F8

Also if your Host OS is OS X 10.5.x then you may need to temporarily disable F8 for Spaces in OS X System Preferences > Mouse & Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts or under Expose & Spaces > Spaces as you will need the F8 Key to accept the EULA or get into Safe Mode

Also under OS X System Preferences > Mouse & Keyboard > Keyboard > Use all F1, F2, etc. check box

You can also look at VMware Fusion menu bar click VMware Fusion > Preferences... > and uncheck Enable Mac OS keyboard shortcuts

I'm mentioning all the various keyboard related items because depending on how you may have any of these configures can/will effect just how you get F8 to function in the Virtual Machine for being able to boot into Safe Mode.

[mmarinho]

Thanks for the keyboard tips. I was trying to do just that but didn't realize F8 was associated with something else. But i'm afraid I'm not even getting that far. F8 is not bringing up the XP Boot menu.

-Manny

[WoodyZ]

You need to press F8 at the right moment and with a problematic system that's hard to get the timing just right so here is what I do sometimes especially on a really fast system...

Click the Play button and then quickly click into the Display to set focus into the Virtual Machine and when the BIOS flashes start pressing the F8 key and do it a few time close together like a 1/2 second in between. You may have to try this several times.

[mmarinho]

I see what you are saying and that's what I been trying but no luck so far. It seems to me that it's some kind of vmware issue as I don't even think it's getting far enough to start loading windows. I am able to press F2 and enter the vmware virtual BIOS.

-Manny

[WoodyZ]

Try booting the Windows Install CD to see if you can get to a point that you can do a Repair Install... Not saying to do a repair install yet althought it may come down to it.

[mmarinho]

I'm doing that now but looks like I will need to load/supply the vmware driver first otherwise XP Setup doesn't see the disk. As far as I know (in the PC/Windows World at least) there are two ways to do this, using a floppy drive with the driver on a disk or using a XP Install CD with the driver already slip-streamed on it. Is there another way to do this in this case?

-Manny

[WoodyZ]

Download the SCSI Disk Drivers and assign the vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp to a Floppy via the Settings sheet for the target Virtual Machine. You cannot use a USB Floppy Drive in Fusion at this point in the process.

Have a look at: VMware Fusion menu > Help > VMware Fusion Help > Managing Virtual Machines > Configuring a Floppy Device

[mmarinho]

Thanks for the info. This worked fine and XP sees the partition but it does not allow me to do a repair which I am well familiar with. Instead I am presented with the option to format the drive and do a clean install. I have a feeling that XP is not seeing the partition properly because it's showing the whole partition as free which is not correct. I think this is a vmware issue rather than a windows xp issue but unfortunately I have not had any luck fixing it. Thanks for your help.

-Manny

[mmarinho]

Don't know if this sheds any light on this issue but I do see the following error more than once in my vmware.log (I'm concentrating on this part "Error: Encountered Apple bug #5202831"):

Jul 22 22:43:01.721: mks| Current OpenGL Version: 2.0 NVIDIA-1.5.28 major: 2, minor: 0, release: 0

Jul 22 22:43:01.724: mks| GLUtil_InstallExtensionLists: Missing extension GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit

Jul 22 22:43:01.724: mks| GLUtil_InstallExtensionLists: Missing extension GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil

Jul 22 22:43:01.726: mks| GLHostInitializeLimits: Maximum hardware accelerated viewport size: (8192 x 8192)

Jul 22 22:43:01.732: mks| GLChain: Using GL_ARB_texture_rectangle textures.

Jul 22 22:43:01.747: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Jul 22 22:43:01.757: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Jul 22 22:43:01.805: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Jul 22 22:43:01.847: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Jul 22 22:43:01.887: vmx| Error: Encountered Apple bug #5202831. Disconnecting.

Jul 22 22:43:01.887: vmx| SOCKET 1 (28) recv detected client closed connection

Jul 22 22:43:01.927: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).

Jul 22 22:43:01.975: vcpu-1| guestCpuFeatures = 0x406001fc

-Manny

[WoodyZ]

I think this is a vmware issue rather than a windows xp issue but unfortunately I have not had any luck fixing it.

It really doesn't matter whether it's a Fusion or Windows issue because you said "My XP VM/Mac OS hung so I had no choice but to force a power down by holding the power button until the laptop turned off. This has happened before." and forcing a system down like that can trash the disk both physical and virtual. If you have data that you need to try and retrieve then I would try booting with the Live OS Knoppix and you can read what I've written on this via this link. Fusion Forum Search - Knoppix & WoodyZ If you don't have anything you need to try and recover then I'd delete that Virtual Machine and create a new one.

[mmarinho]

I will take a look at that. It won't be the end of the World if I loose it but I'd like to avoid it. I still feel (and hope) this can be fixed. Like I said this has happened at least once before. But I also realize what you are saying as I have seen it many times in non-virtual environments.

-Manny

[mmarinho]

If I'm understanding you correctly knoppix might let me mount my virtual machine and then allow me to access the virtual drive and copy data from it? I'm assuming only in a best case scenario this will be possible.

-Manny

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

Yes your assumption is correct and it does not necessarily have to be the best case scenario. In other words I have had some success getting data off of a corrupt virtual hard drive when a Virtual Machine would not boot normally. Sometimes I was able to retrieve all of the data and sometimes only some of it and other times none of it. It just depends on how messed up the disk structure is and that goes for both the physical and virtual disks.

[mmarinho]

My physical disk should be fine it's not even two weeks old. But I have been noticing an issue with using large hard drives (i.e. 320 GB and now 500 GB -- yes internal on my MacBook Pro. But that will be another topic for another forum I think.

-Manny

[mmarinho]

Here is another interesting thing that happened. I tried to copy my XP virtual machine (the one with the issue here) to an external drive and it always fails to copy at the same point 1.96 GB, the vm is a total 0f 52.57 GB. It fails with "error code 36 data could not be read or written" each time I attempt to copy the vm to an external drive I get the same error at the same point.

I have burned the knoppix ISO, what do I need to press to boot from it when I boot the macbook?

-Manny

[WoodyZ]

Here is another interesting thing that happened. I tried to copy my XP virtual machine (the one with the issue here) to an external drive and it always fails to copy at the same point 1.96 GB, the vm is a total 0f 52.57 GB. It fails with "error code 36 data could not be read or written" each time I attempt to copy the vm to an external drive I get the same error at the same point.

How is the external hard drive formated? Sounds like it could be FAT32. Ctrl-click the Drive Icon on the Desktop and select Get Info and report what it says under Format:

I have burned the knoppix ISO, what do I need to press to boot from it when I boot the macbook?

1. You boot the Virtual Machine not the Host.

2. You do not need to burn it to optical media. Just assign the ISO Image it to the CD/DVD of the target Virtual Machine in it's settings sheet.

Go back and look through the various posts I've already made on this and also provided you the link for this as I've already covered this many times.

[mmarinho]

It's a 1 TB drive. I have split it into two partitions. One is a MAC OS Extended (Journaled) and the other a NTFS-3G (MacFuse). I am trying to copy it to the Mac partition.

-Manny

[mmarinho]

Unfortunately the knoppix ISO did not help me at all. First mouse control was horrible I just couldn't get the mouse to work properly (couldn't open things, etc). I managed to start the samba server but no matter what I did I could not connect to it from the MAC OS. Also it looks like it was never able to mount my vmware volumes as I never saw any data at all on the drive that it mounted. So I gave up on this one, I removed my virtual machines. I created a new virtual machine and imported a backup of a virtual machine I had. That's working fine except each time I boot the new machine I get the following message which if I ignore it works fine:

Your guest operating system is Windows XP and you have one or more virtual SCSI devices installed in your virtual machine. Please be aware that Windows XP does not support the BusLogic SCSI adapter that VMware Fusion currently uses for its virtual SCSI devices. If you have not done so already, you will need to install our driver in the virtual machine. You can download the driver from our Web site at "http://vmware.com/info?id=43".

Click OK to continue or Cancel to abort.

I downloaded the mentioned file but don't know what I need to do with it as it is not a disk image (.dmg) or anything you can install on its own. The extension on the file is .flp. I have already installed the vmware tools under my vm.

-Manny

[admin]

If the virtual machine is running, you can ignore the message. By default, XP doesn't come with the SCSI drivers needed. If the virtual machine runs, it obtained has the correct drivers from somewhere (in your case, the backup had them installed already).

In case you were wondering, a .flp is a floppy image. If you wanted to use it, you'd add a virtual floppy drive to the virtual machine and point it at the .flp file.