Running VirtualBox Virtual Machines after a Crash on Windows 7 host?

Question

I restored a backup of my Win7 box.

When I ran the old version of VirtualBox that I had installed before, it listed the Virtual Machines that I had installed at the time of the previous backup.

So, I uninstalled the old version of Virtual box, and re-installed the latest version of VirtualBox (which is what I had installed in the first place).

I then deleted the .VirtualBox directory from my %USERPROFILE% directory, and I copied the .VirtualBox folder that I had previously to my %USERPROFILE% directory. Now when I start VirtualBox it displays a list of the Virtual machines that I had before my computer crashed.

Note that I still have the hdd files on an external drive and they were not harmed by the os crash.

For some reason however, when I go to run those Virtual Machines, they cause the screen on my computer to go black, and the OS to seemingly freeze up (not totally though).

Is there anything else I need to do to get my old virtual machines running again?

Update

I determined the source of the problem (my VirtualBoxes are back up and running now...except for the one with snapshots, I still need to fix that...)

The problem was that I installed True Image 2011, and two services it installs were eating up the CPU like crazy.

I stopped the two True Image services, and the problem still occurred; but after doing a backup and a fresh install of Windows 7, I installed just True Image, re-turned off the services, and found that I could use VirtualBox again.

Finally, I set a restore point in the fresh install, and installed Spyware Doctor 8.0 which seemed to be causing the issue.

For now I have rolled back the restore point, and have decided to use Windows Defender in the interim.

I have cross-posted this on the Spyware Doctor forum in the hopes that some one on either side might know why the two programs are interfering with one another.

Answer 1

It seems you have several potential issues which need to be resolved in order.

1) Is your current Vbox install working? Can you create and run a new VM? If not then you need to resolve that first.

2) How much has your hardware changed since the crash? As I understand it Vbox isn't totally hardware agnostic. That's why with Vbox you have to "export" and "import" VMs rather than just copying a directory tree. Since it's the same system that shouldn't be a problem, but be aware of impacts that changes might have had on resource locations since your old VMs will not have any idea that resources were swapped out.

3) Try removing 2D/3D acceleration from your display choices if you have them checked. Make sure your display has enough memory allocated, especially if you've used Vbox additions.