Windows 7: My Windows XP virtual machine froze during restart

I have been using Windows XP mode for quite some time now, but i have never encountered a problem like this before.

Last night when I rebooted my virtual machine I also accidentally closed the VM window at the same time. This sent the virtual machine into hibernation while it was still restarting.

When I turned it back on, I saw the message "Please wait... Saving your settings". I waited for about 10 minutes, and when still nothing happened I tried to reboot the machine myself with the Action|Restart command in the Virtual PC shell.



The restart command then invoked the logical response "The virtual machine is restarting. Please wait for the operation to complete".

I had an idea, and I tried disabling Integration features. After that I actually came upon the Log On window! But, after entering the password I got the "Logon connect Failed" message (see attached image), and again nothing happened.

I think it would be fairly easy to solve this problem if I had an option to shut down or hard reset the virtual machine. But, AFAIK, that option is not available.

Does any of you kind people out there have a suggestion for me?

Thank you very much!

P.S. I apologise in advance for my English, it is not my native language, I hope you can understand anything from my incoherent writing

My first though would be to mount the XP VHD in disk management and delete the hiberfil file.

Hi Jordus, thank you for your suggestion, howeve there was no hiberfil.sys file in the mounted image, it might be because Windows 7 takes care of the hibernation.

However, i did manage to solve the problem by altering Virtual Machine settings. I changed the setting what happens when I click the Close button and I changed it from hibernation to Shut Down. I shut down the machine, and when I turned it back on it started to work! An extremely easy solution, sorry for wasting your time, but maybe it will help someone else.

I had the same problem. When I followed what was suggested in the final post I got the black screen of death (BSOD). Then I changed my "Close" action to "Turn Off" rather than "Shutdown." This apparently forced the virtual machine to shut down. When I turned the virtual machine on again it worked.

As a matter of fact, it helped me. I had exactly the same problem, and your trick solved it. Thank you.

All Virtual PC virtual machines, including XP Mode, have hibernation data saved in file <VIRTUAL_MACHINE_NAME>.vsv which is located by default in C:\Users\Your_Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines.

So for example to manually delete XP Mode's hibernation data and force it to reboot you need to delete file C:\Users\Your_Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vsv.

(File extension vsv = Virtual SaVed state file, equivalent of hiberfile.sys in physical computers.)


Kari

Hi, know this thread is quite old but encountered a similar problem recently. Also in my case, the VM had hibernated and wouldn't come back on again. Solved by deleting the file "Windows XP Mode.vsv", the virtual machine's saved state, and it started fine.

Thanks Kari!

Hi Sparhawk, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Nice to know you got it working