Windows 10 fails to start after via Virtualbox after 10.15.3 upd

[Baletin]

Dear friends,
I used to run W10 via Virtual box, but after the last update to 10.15.3 I cannot start Windows at all: there is a blue screen "Recovery" saying "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" bla bla bla - and I cannot do anything.
I deleted all w10 VMs, I reinstalled VB but cannot initiate Windows installation within VB - the same blue screen appears.
Any thoughts will be highly appreciated, friends. Please help - I need to read a remote mails which supported only via Windows...

 

[chscag]

It sounds like 10.15.3 may have broken VirtualBox. I believe the same thing happened to some folks when they updated to 10.15.2. You might have better luck finding a solution by posting in the VB forums. VB Forums

 

[NoBoMac]

What @chscag said: might be better off on the VB forums for this. And hit the MS support site for possible fixes.

As a data point, not seeing any issue with up-to-date Win10 and latest VB (6.1.2).

What install media are you using? I had a similar issue a long time ago with Windows' built-in upgrade route in the past, lots of BSoDs. What I seem to recall that fixed things was downloading the latest ISO image from MS website and installing from that.

Oh and: I make a habit of keeping a copy of the "old" VM, in case latest runs into issues. Eg. before applying latest updates, make a copy of the VM that I can roll back to.

 

[Baletin]

At first, the old VM stopped working, thus I deleted it and add a new one - fail. Then I uninstalled VB and tried to reinstall W10 via it - fails. Have no idea what to do. I run out of storage as I do not know how to return 20GB allocated to old W10...

 

[NoBoMac]

I run out of storage as I do not know how to return 20GB allocated to old W10...

Not sure what you mean here: are you talking about physical disk or virtual disk?

If virtual, and installing a new VM, just assign how big a disk you need. Personally, I think I've created a 30GB virtual drive for Win10, as a bare-bones install (OS + Firefox) is eating about 21GB. The extra space for updates.

If physical space, nothing needs to be deallocated: the VM is basically a folder to MacOS; delete, empty trash, done.

Now, if trying to increase the size of an existing VM's virtual disk, that gets a little tricky. Here's a link on how to do that.

How to Enlarge a Virtual Machine's Disk in VirtualBox or VMware

Who doesn't love shuffling partitions around?

www.howtogeek.com

The instructions for the VB commands are for Windows, but, basically same. The VB commands are in /usr/local/bin or /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS

Now, if I recall correctly, the GParted mentioned in the link no longer works. Can't recall exactly how to do the merge of partitions, but, seem to recall that there is an option in the Disk Management tool to merge the partitions (my Win10 is not running right now, and will be offline shortly). Took some Googling and clicking around to find the correct sequence of commands to get it to work (been a few years since done).

 

[Baletin]

Not sure what you mean here: are you talking about physical disk or virtual disk?

If virtual, and installing a new VM, just assign how big a disk you need. Personally, I think I've created a 30GB virtual drive for Win10, as a bare-bones install (OS + Firefox) is eating about 21GB. The extra space for updates.

If physical space, nothing needs to be deallocated: the VM is basically a folder to MacOS; delete, empty trash, done.

Now, if trying to increase the size of an existing VM's virtual disk, that gets a little tricky. Here's a link on how to do that.

How to Enlarge a Virtual Machine's Disk in VirtualBox or VMware

Who doesn't love shuffling partitions around?

www.howtogeek.com

The instructions for the VB commands are for Windows, but, basically same. The VB commands are in /usr/local/bin or /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS

Now, if I recall correctly, the GParted mentioned in the link no longer works. Can't recall exactly how to do the merge of partitions, but, seem to recall that there is an option in the Disk Management tool to merge the partitions (my Win10 is not running right now, and will be offline shortly). Took some Googling and clicking around to find the correct sequence of commands to get it to work (been a few years since done).

Thanks for the answer. I meant, I cant install many W10 versions etc, there is no problem with RAM or HDD at the moment. The old W10 VM stopped working just after update to 15.3