[vbox-dev] Where have my VMs gone ?

[Klaus Espenlaub]

On 25.02.2015 13:41, Kerry, Richard wrote:
>
> Sorry, I was taken rather by surprise and alarmed by what had happened.  And I have managed to find the files and manually fix the issue, so it's not quite so urgent, though I would like to know why it happened, and what exactly happened.
>
> I upgraded from 4.3.20, I think.  I'm working on Windows 7 Ultimate.
> I had opened that first (ie VBox Manager), so I'd seen my existing set of VMs, as expected.  I'd not used it for a while and the upgrade dialog appeared.  I selected OK as VBox updates are usually straightforward.  Downloaded the installer and ran it.  No unusual dialogs, though I did have to kill a couple of applications running in the background (eg itunes helper and async notifier and a couple of others).
>
> On running up the new version of Manager the window was empty, which was rather alarming !
> So it had somehow during the update lost track of where all my VM files were.

Sounds like your user account had the environment variable HOME set 
(which isn't a Windows standard environment variable).

This is mentioned on https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog and we 
considered it to be a bug fix, as it wasn't ever intended to be used for 
moving the VirtualBox settings. In your case it seems that you never 
intended to move the settings elsewhere and got caught by surprise.

Klaus

> With some searching I eventually found the files, and manually added them all.  (Suggestion - allow a folder to be selected and all VMs within it to be added in a single action, rather than only a single .vbox file at a time).
>
> So that's what happened.  As I say I have (manually) fixed the issue.  But it would be nice to know what happened, and to be sure it wouldn't happen again, for me or anyone else.
>
>
> Regards,
> Richard.
>
>
>
>
> Richard Kerry
> BNCS Engineer, SI SOL Telco & Media Vertical Practice
>
> T: +44 (0)20 3618 2669
> M: +44 (0)7812 325518
> Lync: +44 (0) 20 3618 0778
> Room G300, Stadium House, Wood Lane, London, W12 7TA
> richard.kerry at atos.net
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frank Mehnert [mailto:frank.mehnert at oracle.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 12:16 PM
> To: vbox-dev at virtualbox.org
> Subject: Re: [vbox-dev] Where have my VMs gone ?
>
> Richard,
>
> On Wednesday 25 February 2015 11:44:23 Kerry, Richard wrote:
>> Alright, where have they moved to ?
>>
>> Or where has the default location for searching for them moved to ?
>>
>> I’ve just updated to 4.3.22 and the VirtualBox Manager can’t find my VMs.
>>
>>
>> I don’t think there was a warning “installing this update will lose
>> all existing VMs” so I assume it’s just the location it’s looking in
>> that has changed.
>
> a bit more information would be appreciated. From your description I assume that the VirtualBox Manager does not show any VMs but only an empty window, is that correct?
>
> On which host you are working and which was the version of VirtualBox which you upgraded to 4.3.22?
>
> Frank