Take the 2-minute tour ×

I have a Win7 virtual machine running on Windows Virtual PC where I'm currently developing. I found that I dislike WVPC, and installed VirtualBox, hoping for better performance.

However, importing the existing VHD into a new VM seems to not work, because even if I see the Windows boot screen, the OS will crash on a BSOD and requires the restore tool to run. That tool finds no problem, reboots but the BSOD is still present.

I wouldn't like to format a new VM if possible.

Is it possible to do such switching?

share|improve this question
What's the BSoD error you're getting? –  Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Apr 15 '12 at 15:59
The problem is that the system reboots SO QUICKLY that's impossible for me to read and understand the entire message. I could see no file indication (I know where in the BSOD the text is written) –  djechelon Apr 15 '12 at 21:46

4 Answers 4

up vote 7 down vote accepted

I saw the error message and googled it:

stop: 0x0000007b (0x80786b50,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

It means that the system is having problem with its boot device driver. So since I know that Virtual PC uses IDE drives as system boot devices, I just switched the VirtualBox to use IDE device instead of SATA. Then, it works.

share|improve this answer
This was the exact problem I had. Switching to IDE worked for me. –  CigarDoug Jul 24 at 17:50

You need to remove the Virtual PC "Guest Additions" (under Virtual PC), then install the Virtual Box "Guest Additions" after you boot the VM under VBox.

share|improve this answer

Save the machine hd then you can import it in VirtualBox.

Just tell him "Other" When picking the source file http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

Another solution would be to set basic hardware/similar hardware in the virtual box settings

share|improve this answer
I don't think this will help. I mean, I can already read the VHD file with VirtualBox since it supports that format. The problem is that Windows won't complete its boot. Am I missing something? –  djechelon Apr 15 '12 at 14:53
Try to convert the hd image, maybe it would read it better. Some tested it already and it worked. Oh, and check hardware settings too! That maybe solve the issue too. –  TweakFix Apr 15 '12 at 14:54
If you just added an existing Windows VHD to a VirtualBox VM, then the problem may be that Windows does not have the correct VirtualBox "hardware drivers" installed. If you convert then the drivers may be added during the conversion process? (Moving Windows from one set of hardware to another has been a PITA since forever. :-( If you do get it to boot be ready for it to ask you to re-authenticate.) –  irrational John Apr 15 '12 at 16:04
@irrationalJohn I already had to reauthenticate twice when I changed and restored RAM amounts :) –  djechelon Apr 15 '12 at 21:46

I had a similar problem coming from VirtualPC to VirtualBox with a couple Linux VMs.

I set up a virtual machine using the Linux VHD and had rather flakey behavior and lockups despite the VirtualPC VHD file support.

So I cloned the VM (Machine->Clone). The cloned VM ran just fine without the wierdness. I'm not sure exactly how it fixed it, but I've done this with the other VHD files and they all seem to run quite well after cloning.

I haven't done this with a Windows VM yet, though. Given the misery I've had with moving real life Windows hard drives from one machine to another, there's some serious prep work necessary to make Windows re-scan its hardware and come up.

I realize this is a kind of on-the-periphery kind of answer, but the move to VirtualBox was well worth it.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


