Operating System not found after crash

[swartz4209]

Hi I use VMWare Player to run a WinXP OS VM on my Win7 enviornment because I have some programs which are not compatible on my host/main computer.

My 'real' computer froze while I had the VM playing on the VMWare player and I had to force a shut down of the main/host computer.

After re-booting I tried to restart "Play" the VM and initially it tried to restore the saved state but gave a message that it was unable to do so. I chose to restart the system and when it did that I got an error that the Operating System is not found.

I have two virtual hard drives and from the help files I've read trying to solve this I'm wondering if it's trying to boot from the wrong one?

I'm not sure how to check this or how to get to the bios because it doesn't really fully re-boot. When I power off it and then choose play again it just returns me immediately to the dos like screen that tells that the OS isn't found.

I'm attaching a screen shot of the error. It looks like it is trying to boot over a network... no idea why it is doing that. It should boot from my local virtual hard drive.

Any help anyone can provide is much appreciated.

Thanks

[swartz4209]

There is a similiar issue described in this post:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/156498

Where he fixes the PXE issue by disabling something in the BIOS.

But I think he is trying to do a fresh install from a external disk and I also do not know how to get to the BIOS from the screen I attached in my original post.

I'm a bit scared of making the problem worse.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Communities forums. Your post has been moved to the Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[khughes]

Have you tried to run a repair on the Windows XP OS? I would troubleshoot it just as if the VM was a physical box. I would boot to the windows XP disk and run a repair (not a full reinstall) and see if that gets the system back up and running.

-- Kyle

"RParker wrote: I guess I was wrong, everything CAN be virtualized "

[continuum]

first thing to do in such a case is boot the VM with a LiveCD - ideally a BartPE for Windows XP and check what is left on the disk.

Maybe setting the active flag or running a checkdisk does it ...




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[swartz4209]

Thank you for your quick replies.

I don't have the XP Disk. My IT Department prepared the VM for me with the OS already installed and then I just had to install the software I needed.

I work remotely so I can't easily get the disk either. Is it possible to run it over a network connection?