VM becomes inaccessilbe, "Could not find a registered CD/DVD image with UUID..."

[bradtem]

Returning to a Windows XP Home guest VM running on a Kubuntu Edgy system, I find the VM to be tagged "inaccessible" with this error:

Could not find a registered CD/DVD image with UUID {90780d30-7262-4296-9d45-b1fdf718e414}.

Result Code: 0x80070057 Component: VirtualBox Interface: IVirtualBox {e1d95593-f579-4f47-b489-0b67181014e1}

The vdi file and snapshots are still present on the disk. Possibly the cd image of WinXP used to create the machine is now gone, however, it had long since been detached as far as I know and is not visible in the virtual disk manager. Just prior I had been testing the VM to try to diagnose a blue screen of death when accessing a second shared folder.

Is there a way to get the VM operating again (with current state integrated -- I can copy the vdi and run a new VM on it, but that has only the virgin original snapshot in it)

[rainbowbuilder]

When I had this problem, I edited the machine XML file in .VirtualBox\Machines\{vm_name}\{vm_name}.XML and replaced the line with the UUID specified with the line:

<DVDDrive passthrough="false"/>

That disconnected the CD/DVD and enabled me to resume the vm.

gary

[Virender Dogra]

The above solution worked for me. Also remember that if you have multiple snapshots, you will have to change to the <DVDDrive passthrough="false"/> line for all of them in the xml file. The error was most probably caused due to an earlier snapshot still referring to the previous non-existing image.

[JayEm]

Any news on this? It shouldn't be hard to fix. This problem also happens for other OSes. I have some ISOs on external drives, if i add these to the media library and mount them, all is ok. If i turn off the external HD after using Vbox und start then VBox again (ISO didn't get unmounted), you get the above error. It is very annoying.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

"It shouldn't be hard to fix." - a bold statement. What should happen if an attached iso image is not available? Silently ignoring is certainly not the right way for everyone, e.g. for VMs which should boot off such an image.

This is complicated. In the easy case (no snapshots) the solution is to fix your VM configuration. However with snapshots that would mean "messing with the past", and that can cause guest OSes to become cranky if a medium in the DVD drive(s) disappears unexpectedly. Remember, we're now able to go back to older snapshots and branch off new snapshots there...

[JayEm]

manually editing configuration files can't be the solution too. why not let the user decide what should happen? (RadioButton option)

[aeichner]

This should be fixed since a long time, non existing iso images shouldn't cause the VM to be inaccessible anymore.