Hi, I have windows XP and linux ubuntu on the same HD, i install VirtualBox 1.6, and run my existing windows as virtual, with these commands:

it boot fine, but after windows login screen i get blue screen of death.

the same thing i did with my other pc, it have windows xp and fedora 9, and the same issue blue screen of death after windows start.

any idea

thanks in advance

Maybe because the hardware from your computer differs from the virtual hardware provided by VirtualBox? Windows XP doesn't have the drivers for the hardware from the virtualbox, and that's why it gives you that awful BSOD.

hmmmm, one laptop is DELL that have xp with ubuntu, the other one is TOSHIBA Tecra the one have XP with Fedora 9.

also one of my friends he have the same setup as me, he have DELL laptop as mine and have on it ubuntu with XP, and the work fine with VirtualBox.

i will try the VirtualBox drivers and i will see if it will solve the problem.

Thanks buddy.

I had the same problem.
Through vmware, you boot windows it starts then the blue screen of death.
There is an association problem with scsi and ide. I could not fix the problem.
I ended up reinstalling windows on its partition through vmware server.
It xp works fine now through vmware. However, I now get the blue screen of death when I tied booting xp through lilo startup.
If you can fix it, I would be glad to know.

That blue screen only demonstrates how good the emulation is :P Sorry for the joke, I couldn't help it.

The problem is not the difference between the hardware on the two laptops. The hardware of the laptop doesn't really matters since windows inside virtualbox can't see it anyway. All the hardware that windows can see within virtualbox is supplied virtually by virtualbox. Windows can't access any physical device.

My guess is that windows can't find a way to boot because, probably, the virtual machine is emulating scsi drives and the laptop had ide ones. The easy option is to reinstall. It's just a virtual machine, you have nothing to loose.

When you install Windows, you install it for a specific motherboard and a certain hard-disk. You change the motherboard, you blew it and have to install windows again. (happened to me ). It's not like linux, where you change the motherboard, the kernel automatically loads the new modules for it

Yep. It's the opposite that people like to think.

Windows sucks when it comes to reconfiguring hardware. It can remain seriously broken just because you change a video card or you migrated from IDE to SATA, making the transition possible only via a complete re installation. When you move an install into VirtualBox, it's the same than moving it into a new pc, because that's what VirtualBox ultimately is: a virtual PC, with it's own hardware, which might not be that hard-kind-of-ware but it's seen by the host OS as hardware, nonetheless.

the problem is my windows is not virtual, i create a disk image (vmdk) pointing to my windows partition. i wont to boot directly to my physical exist windows XP on my HD instead of use grub every time.

i know windows is sucks but we still need it for some dummy works. i hope one day linux can replace windows and all the programmers and companies support linux the same way they support Micro$oft. until that day the only thing we can do as individual is to tell our friends and people how wonderful and powerful linux is and start moving the world to the OpenSource revolution.

Ok. Your windows is on a partition on your hard disk. But when you run in virtual box, it doesn't use the hardware from your laptop, it uses the virtual hardware provided by the virtual machine. Windows doesn't know that it is running in a virtual machine and that he uses different hardware (virtual in this case) from the install.

Long story short: you use an OS in a virtual machine, it works with the virtual hardware, not with the hardware of the physical computer.

I too was having this problem and found the solution here

In a nutshell, Ryan says:

Go to General Settings for the guest machine and under the Advanced tab, select PIIX3 for the IDE Controller Type. It uses PIIX4 by default (which would not boot). I changed it to PIIX3 and it worked fine.

Thanks Ryan!