Using the XP Mode in VirtualBox

Sorry to resurrect this, but I just followed those instructions and VirtualBox says the vdi is "inaccessible".

Eh, I gave up on it. I am just using VMWare Player now since it has the easy Import XP Mode option. I have done this in the past but really wanted to make VirtualBox work due to some really slow booting issues that occur quite randomly in VMWare Player with XP Mode.

That's why I moved to it. But, it's really annoying that it screws up everytime I choose to reboot XP Mode. If I shut it down, then restart the VM, it works fine. But, if I just click Restart in XP Mode, it shuts down then does this freezing stop-action startup that takes about 30 minutes to finally get to the login screen.

I am running 3.1.3 at the moment which I used originally to load XP Mode and the problem was immediate. So I uninstalled and reverted to 3.1.2 and it still had the problem. I uninstalled that and left it alone for a couple months but wanted it back so I'm running 3.1.3 now and still the same problem. I have an account on VMWare and am supposedly signed up for the communities but can't make a post on there. No clue what is going on with that but it's rather frustrating as that's the only way you can get help with the free player.

Sure, but there isn't much detail, really. I downloaded and installed 3.1.3 VMWare Player for my x64 Win 7 system. I rebooted as requested. XPMode had already been installed (by going to the MS site and downloading the Step #1 file that contains it). I never installed the Virtual PC Step #2 file nor the Step #3 update to it. I then just loaded up VMWare Player, Imported XPMode VM, everything went smooth on first boot and got all set up. I restarted it and the problem immediately began. It's a bit tough to explain but imagine you have a video on pause and you are only advancing one frame every 10 seconds or so. This is how the entire boot process goes from initial VMWare BIOS logo through to the XP login. At first it appears as if it's frozen, only because the Windows progress logo is fading in one frame at a time and it takes absolutely forever. I usually end up resetting the VM when it happened (before I found out that a shutdown and then re-start of the VM fixed it each time), of which upon next boot I'd have to select to start Windows with the last known good configuration and then a "this VM hard disk is fragmented and needs to be defragged" message following it.

It has just been messed up from the beginning and I have no clue why. I even uninstalled and reinstalled my XP Mode as well, to no success.