Virtual machine no longer accessible

[GKNByNW]

I have a Win7 virtual machine through VirtualBox on my remote server that I use for encoding video. The Win7 machine is "headless" with Remote Desktop access set up for control. Somehow that virtual machine has become lost or inaccessible and can no longer be booted up. When I try to start the machine I get the following:

[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~$ VBoxManage startvm "MeGUI" --type headless
VBoxManage: error: Could not find a registered machine named 'MeGUI'
VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001), component VirtualBoxWrap, interface IVirtualBox, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "FindMachine(Bstr(pszVM).raw(), machine.asOutParam())" at line 573 of file VBoxManageMisc.cpp
[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~$

Also of note is this:

[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~$ VBoxManage list vms
"<inaccessible>" {c94f2200-7623-4fde-a4cb-84dc0039ecd8}
[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~$

The directory for the VM still exists along with the VDI files (I use two disks with the VM, one for the OS and one for data)

[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~$ cd Virtu*
[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~/VirtualBox VMs$ ls -l
total 4
drwx------ 3 gknbynw gknbynw 4096 Oct 28 22:10 MeGUI
[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(0b)~/VirtualBox VMs$ cd MeGUI
[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(144.5Gb)~/VirtualBox VMs/MeGUI$ ls -l
total 151620260
drwx------ 2 gknbynw gknbynw         4096 Nov 19 17:36 Logs
-rw------- 1 gknbynw gknbynw  26619150336 Oct 28 22:10 MeGUI-01.vdi
-rw------- 1 gknbynw gknbynw 128643497984 Oct 28 22:10 MeGUI-02.vdi
-rw------- 1 gknbynw gknbynw            0 Oct 28 22:10 MeGUI.vbox
-rw------- 1 gknbynw gknbynw         7763 Oct 15 09:59 MeGUI.vbox-prev
[gknbynw@QuickBox]:(144.5Gb)~/VirtualBox VMs/MeGUI$

It's been over a year since I set this up and I'm not very familiar with VirtualBox's command line beyond the basic starting up of the machine, so I'm not really sure where to go. The VDI files appear intact, so all I would have to do is create a new machine. HOWEVER, I *really* don't want to do that as I don't quite recall how to do so without calling upon Google

[oshunluvr]

Just a guess here, but your MeGUI.vbox file is zero bites. It seems to me that something went wrong with that file. The MeGUI.vbox-prev file looks to be a normal size. I looked through all my VMs and none of them have zero-byte .vbox files.

What if you renamed MeGUI.vbox to MeGUI.vbox-old (rather than deleting it), then copy MeGUI.vbox-prev to MeGUI.vbox and tried again? If this doesn't work, at least you can restore it to the previous state.

[GKNByNW]

Just a guess here, but your MeGUI.vbox file is zero bites. It seems to me that something went wrong with that file. The MeGUI.vbox-prev file looks to be a normal size. I looked through all my VMs and none of them have zero-byte .vbox files.

What if you renamed MeGUI.vbox to MeGUI.vbox-old (rather than deleting it), then copy MeGUI.vbox-prev to MeGUI.vbox and tried again? If this doesn't work, at least you can restore it to the previous state.

Sorry for the late reply, but I'm lucky if I have the energy to sit down at the computer but once or twice a week. Your suggestion worked! After renaming the 2 files, running "VBoxManage list vms" showed my MeGUI machine and I was able to start it up and access it as I always have. I'm really not sure what happened to change the files, except I *might* have had the virtual machine running when I rebooted the server itself a while back.

[oshunluvr]

I'm really not sure what happened to change the files, except I *might* have had the virtual machine running when I rebooted the server itself a while back.

Seems the likely source of the problem. If so, we need a script that runs and checks your VM to be sure they're down before system shutdown. Did you have any hard re-starts? Power failures, etc.?

[GKNByNW]

Seems the likely source of the problem. If so, we need a script that runs and checks your VM to be sure they're down before system shutdown. Did you have any hard re-starts? Power failures, etc.?

Not that I'm aware of. The server is leased through Hetzner and they've proven to be fairly reliable. I do reboot the system once a month or so when I do major updates. I usually shut down the VM when I'm not actively using it, but it's entirely possible that I simply forgot. If so then the blame lies on me, and lesson learned