Vista - Copied Virtual Hard disk does not work

I have copied my Virtual Hard disk to an extern USB drive, when i try to
start the OS on the Virtual disk I get the following error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.
Please re-install a copy of the above file

I have copied both the vhd and vmc files. I have tried all kind of
combinations like creatin a new vmc file, reusing the existing one but
nothing seems to work. One difference I am seeing between the original vhd
file and the copied one is the size, somehow the size of the copied file is
much smaller. Is it possible that the file somehow gets compressed on
copying?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

"Bofors" <bofors@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ukyzZ2waJHA.5788@xxxxxxI would say that you have a corrupt .vhd file. Have you tried deleting
it and making a fresh copy from your external drive?

Ok. I will just start all over again. Copy the working copy to external disk
and try again but I don't think that's the case because I have a few other
virtual hard disk images and none of them work either.


Thanks


"Bill Grant" <not.available@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eIyd8$waJHA.4520@xxxxxx

Copied the vhd file to external drive and still the same problem. When I try
to run the VPC with vhd on the external drive I get the following error:

Windows could not start becasue the following file is missing or corrupt:
\Windows\System32\config\system

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows setup using the
original Setup CD-ROM
.......

If I copy this vhd file to my main hard drive I get the other mentioned in
the original post.

Host OS is Windows XP, guest OS is Windows Server 2003 and I am running
Virtual PC 2007.

This problem is driving me nuts. Any please advise?

Thanks


"Bofors" <bofors@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OdKypHxaJHA.4068@xxxxxx

If the USB drive formatted as FAT32 (that's usually the default on
such things) and the original VHD files are over 4G? If so that's
your problem, the files are getting truncated because FAT32 can't have
files bigger than 4G.

--
Bob Comer



On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:04:23 -0600, "Bofors" <bofors@xxxxxx>
wrote:

"Robert Comer" <bobcomer-removeme-@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:rqpml4dmji80lc0jmdtdhrjk5f0ju7hriq@xxxxxx
As I understand it, if a VHD is *first created* on a FAT32 partition, VPC
will break it into 4GB sections as required.

But do you know of any utility which will take an *existing* VHD which was
created on an NTFS partition and split into 4GB sections so that it can be
later copied onto a FAT32 partition...?


--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

>As I understand it, if a VHD is *first created* on a FAT32 partition, VPCThat's correct.
No, I don't, but I've done that very thing by making a new VHD on a
FAT32 partition, make a new VM(generic, no OS needed), attach the old
VHD and the new one as the second disk, boot VM using Acronis Disk
Director CD image, copy partition from the old to the new.

However, these days I just format the USB drive as NTFS even if it is
a bit slower over USB... (I also turn on compression at the same
time)

--
Bob Comer


On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:52:10 -0000, "Mark Rae [MVP]"
<mark@xxxxxx> wrote:

"Robert Comer" <bobcomer-removeme-@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:btvml4t3o7mm866mjc1od1m8bl22ueg8o1@xxxxxx
Yes, that's what I do too, where possible... I have several Iomega REV disks
which don't support NTFS, as they have their own (UDF) format which means
that Windows sees them as CDs...
Interesting... Do you find that VHDs perform as well (or even better) on
compressed volumes, or is it just a question of saving space on the host's
HD...?


--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

>Interesting... Do you find that VHDs perform as well (or even better) onFor internal disks there doesn't seem to be any speed penalty and the
space saving is the only reason I do it. (And VHD's usually compress
pretty well)

I've never had good luck running VM's off of a USB drive no matter how
it's formatted, eventually it gets corrupted. So I only use USB as
near line storage for this very reason. I think there's a lot of bad
USB controllers out there and I happen to always get one of the bad
ones.

--
Bob Comer






On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:39:02 -0000, "Mark Rae [MVP]"
<mark@xxxxxx> wrote:

In message <eJNAIW1aJHA.4480@xxxxxx> "Mark Rae [MVP]"
<mark@xxxxxx> was claimed to have wrote:
I spent some time testing, once upon a time. Read speeds were
noticeably higher, but write speeds were just bad -- NTFS compression
was great if you're using undo disks though.