Could not find an open hard disk with UUID {....} on VirtualBox 4.1.2

Question

Guest: Ubuntu
Guest VM Name: WordpressThemeDevBox
Host: Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate
VirtualBox Version: 4.1.2 r73507

I shut off my guest and removed the Current State snapshot using the Restore Snapshot button.

After the process completed I returned to the Oracle VirtualBox Manager and the following error was displayed in the right hand panel:

The selected virtual machine is inaccessible. Please inspect the error message shown below and press the Refresh button if you want to repeat the accessibility check:

Could not find an open hard disk with UUID {73231db-6014-4c49-b092-eac75c33f31d}
Result Code: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
Compoent: VirtualBox
Interface: IVirtualBox {c28be65f-1a8f-43b4-81f1-eb60cb516e66}

I checked in %USERPROFILE%\.VirtualBox\Machines\WordpressThemeDevBox\Snapshots\ and the vdi file {73231db-6014-4c49-b092-eac75c33f31d}.vdi is present in that directory.

I also found this thread over at the VirtualBox forums, but it's refering to version 4.0.4 and they keep talking about a .vbox file which I can't find in my 4.1.2 installation.

Additionally I found a bug pertaining to version 4.0.4 that appears similar to what I am experiencing.

Is there any way of fixing this using VBoxManage or editing one of the xml files like VirtualBox.xml or WordpressThemeDevBox.xml?

Additionally here is more information via paste-bin:

• File Structure (note that the vdi files are on another drive...but I'm not sure which vdi is the base file...)

• WordpressThemeDevBox.xml

• WordpressThemeDevBox.xml-prev

• WordpressThemeDevBox-1.10-windows.xml

Answer 1

I was thinking whether I should ask this question myself since these posts all have 'accepted answers' .

I actually know the answer to this question but I saw so many work-a-rounds and solutions requiring lots of time and effort to accomplish a good result and unfortunately those questions had answers that were marked as solutions. All that is fine as they do work, but I wanted to post what I believe is an easier solution.

The key is that the HardDisk uuid must match the ImageID uuid of the storage medium

<HardDisk uuid="{ba913c05-aac5-4245-a0c9-4baaf7719377}" />


<AttachedDevice type="HardDisk" hotpluggable="false" port="0" device="0">
          <Image uuid="{ba913c05-aac5-4245-a0c9-4baaf7719377}"/>
        </AttachedDevice>

So there it is in a nutshell ..

Close shutdown any running VM's, close the VirtualBox manager. Backup your .vbox file , and yes I know there is one already but do it again to be sure you have a good copy as of right before you changed stuff!

Open your .vbox configuration file for the VM you are having trouble with. Edit the storage medium uuid to match your hard disk uuid (not the other way around).. Save the file. Start the VM and you will be up and running. Hope someone else finds it helpful.

Answer 2

I had the same error
Could not find an open hard disk with UUID {ab625445-c564-4ed5-ab89-2a3e75de7d6c}.

The solution which worked for me was simply to execute the following command:

cd ~/VirtualBox VMs/Win7-VirtualBox/Snapshots
VBoxManage showhdinfo \{ab625445-c564-4ed5-ab89-2a3e75de7d6c\}.vdi

After that the problem was gone and it works again very well. :-)

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14375

Annotation: I know that this command only shows information about the vdi file. Basically this should not help. But this command seems not only to read the file but also repairs it in some way. Executing it was enough and I was immediately able to add and start the machine again. All other attempts which I tried before did not work.

My Version of VirtualBox: 6.1.22_Debian r144080

---

2nd Annotation: After having this problem another time several weeks later I now versioned the following folders in order to be able to restore them next time:

• /home/MyUser/.config/VirtualBox
• /home/MyUser/VirtualBoxVms (= the folder where my .vbox files are)

Answer 3

Okay figured this out. While I never did find out which vdi file I was using from the XML files, I did eventually find the correct vdi file. I used VBoxManage to clone the base vdi file, discarding the snapshots, and created a new vm.

Answer 4

My solution is similar to yours, except that I couldn't use the VBoxManage because the entry was already gone there. Also I haven't had any snapshots that might have interfered with my below solution path. I've a Mint 17 host and Win 8 guest and vBox 5.0.2.

I removed the VM from the VM-List (don't delete from Disk!) created a new VM and instead of creating a new VDI file during the creating of the new VM, I used the existing VDI file from the original VM.

Answer 5

Go to file in your Vbox->Virtual media manager->Add the harddisk manually from c:\user\username\VirtualBox\select the machine\select .vdi file. Now in Vbox- -> Machine->Add Devices-> Go c:\user\username\VirtualBox\select the machine\select .Vbox- file that's it.

Answer 6

After a power failure, I had an inaccessible VM with the "Could not find an open hard disk with UUID {xxxx}" error. Looking at the Virtual Media Manager, I found the .vdi file was no longer listed. In the location on my server where VMs are stored, the .vbox, .vbox-prev, and .vdi files were present.

I am using phpVirtualBox to manage the VMs on a headless server, so the Virtual Media Manager options are limited (there is no 'add' function).

I ran vboxmanage showhdinfo on the .vdi file in the vbox directory as suggested here and the issue was resolved.

Vboxmanage showhdinfo has been replaced by showmediuminfo but apparently the operation is the same. There is an old ticket at https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9077 that explains "VBoxManage showhdinfo tries to register that medium before querying the information". Running this command fixed my problem because it re-registered the original .vdi file.