Many VirtualBox users have experienced at least once the message ‘FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted.‘ Sometimes it is also shown ‘No Bootable Medium Found! System halted‘.

What causes the VirtualBox no bootable medium found an error? According to the investigation, there are several common reasons that can lead to the VirtualBox fatal no bootable medium found error: The bootable ISO disk image is not bootable or has been created improperly. If the physical CD/DVD disc was burned as a data disc instead of a.

This error is more common when trying to start a new virtual machine, but it is not impossible to happen at an existing virtual machine if the virtual hard drive is missing.

Note: This problem has to do purely with VirtualBox, and can be experienced on any host operating system be it Windows, Mac OS or Linux.

What causes this “Could not read from the boot medium” error?

There are two main reasons behind this issue:

• VirtualBox doesn’t point to an operating system, either a mounted iso or a virtual hard disk with a bootable OS. When you create a virtual machine for a first time, you need to mount a bootable iso like Ubuntu. If you mount a bootable iso before you start your virtual machine, you will be successful booting up the system.
• The CD/ DVDstorage device controller is configured as SATA. Another issue can be appeared, if you mount accidentally the bootable iso to a SATA storage device controller instead of IDE. VirtualBox works without any problems when a SATA storage device points to a virtual hard drive, but this is not the case for a bootable iso.

Follow the steps below: 1) Select your VM Instance. Go to Settings-Storage. 2) Under the storage tree select the default image or 'Empty'(which ever is present). 3) Under the attributes frame, click on the CD image and select 'Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file'. Hi klaus, I cannot achieve how to boot my physical Debian from Mac host. I've created the physical vmdk: VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename raw-disk-linux.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -partitions 4,5 (4: ext4 root, 5: swap). Does not work on VirtualBox 6.1 and an AMD CPU. Guru meditation, all additional steps tried: 128MB VRAM, “Mac OS X (64-bit)”, etc It doesn’t change anything, it still doesn’t boot. LOIZOS VASILEIOU May 8, 2020 at 7:56 PM Reply. Hi, I’m using VirtualBox 6.1.6 on a Windows 10, trying to run MAC OS Mojave (.vmdk) that requires 79GB.

How to solve it?

If you are not sure which of the 2 reasons apply to you, I can show you a solution that covers both, and finally stop receiving the error message.

Step 1: Right click on the virtual machine that isn’t a bootable state and click on settings.

Step 2: Once the settings menu is open, follow the steps access storage > Controller:IDE > Choose the bootable iso and click ok.

Step 3: Start your virtual machine and you should be able to boot normally from the mounted iso.

Conclusion

VirtualBox boot issue is very common, and easy to fix but can be frustrating if you don’t know what to do. If you are a regular reader of It’s FOSS, you know already that virtualization technology is among my interests. If you discovered us recently and you are curious to start exploring the features of VirtualBox, I suggest to start experimenting with this guide that covers Fedora installation on VirtualBox, as you can go beyond a simple installation.

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Change History

comment:4 Changed 13 years ago by frank

• Host type changed from other to Mac OS X

comment:5 Changed 13 years ago by frank

• Component changed from other to shared folders

comment:6 Changed 13 years ago by frank

• Component changed from shared folders to virtual disk

Virtualbox Mac No Bootable Medium Found Windows 7

comment:20 Changed 12 years ago by klaus

• Status changed from new to closed
• Resolution set to fixed
• Summary changed from Virtualizing physical partition with createrawvmdk fails on Mac OS X Leopard to Virtualizing physical partition with createrawvmdk fails on Mac OS X Leopard => fixed in svn

comment:21 Changed 12 years ago by gionn

• Status changed from closed to reopened
• Resolutionfixed deleted

comment:35 Changed 12 years ago by frank

• Summary changed from Virtualizing physical partition with createrawvmdk fails on Mac OS X Leopard => fixed in svn to Virtualizing physical partition with createrawvmdk fails on Mac OS X Leopard

comment:36follow-up:↓ 37 Changed 12 years ago by frank

• Version changed from VirtualBox 1.6.0 to VirtualBox 3.0.4

No Bootable Medium Found System Halted Virtualbox Mac Os X

Changed 11 years ago by axet

• attachmentScreen shot 2009-10-31 at 11.18.47 AM.png added

Changed 11 years ago by axet

• attachmentlocalhost.vmdk added

comment:43 Changed 7 years ago by frank

• priority changed from critical to major
• Description modified (diff)