VMDK in VirtualBox: Lesson Learned

The proof is in the pudding as they say !

Yesterday, the use of a Ubuntu 8.10 VMWare vmdk in VirtualBox worked as a charm. The VirtualBox started, I reconfigured the Xorg using sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions and that was that.

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Today, trying to use an existing corporate and custom Windows XP (SP2) VMWare image in VirtualBox, the VirtualBox Virtual Machine started but then stopped before the Windows XP boot up screen. Starting it in Safe Mode only showed that is stopped at the agp40.sys.

Doing some of the usual research, it turns out that for Windows OS based VMWare hard disk images, a couple of advanced VirtualBox settings are recommended:

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1. Enable IO APIC
2. IDE Controller Type: PIIX4

Source: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows [6]

And voila! No conversion required (unless you really want to and need special options or features like Advanced Bridge Network).