1

So let me start with a series of unfortunate events:

I wanted to update Nvidia driver and Cuda and that didn't go too well. I have been getting my VB stuck on started user manager for uid 121

As I noticed I was running out of space in my VB I increased the space using this tutorial: http://derekmolloy.ie/resize-a-virtualbox-disk/

And then all of a sudden my VirtualBox was loading again :) I thought that was the end of it but the mouse is now moving but no clicks and the keyboard is not working either.

I also noticed that the VBoxGuestAdditions was giving this error: could not mount the media/drive 'C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso' (VERR_PDM_MEDIA_LOCKED).

Any help will be greatly appreciated as I have important files on this VM

Katia
  • 31

1 Answers1

0

Before you spend too much time to debug your virtual machine the fastest way to get hold of your important files within the VM would be attaching the existing virtual disk to another VM.

In case you don't have another virtual Ubuntu machine, just create another one making sure you also create a new virtual disk. If you select it to be dynamically growing you can make it large enough (e.g. 50 GB) but it will only use the amount of physical space it needs.

After shut down the new machine just attach the old virtual drive to it from the settings dialog:

enter image description here

In the next window choose add to have a dialog where you can browse to the location of your old virtual drive.

After rebooting the new VM (from the new drive!) the old drive will appear as a location in Nautilus ("Files"), from where you can mount it and copy the files to wherever you want (e.g. a network location, cloud storage or a shared folder).

enter image description here

Only in case your drive's filesystem was corrupt and mounting fails you can use data recovery tools on a copy of the VDI file.

Takkat
  • 142,284
  • After you shut down the new machine just attach the old virtual drive to it from the settings dialog - do you mean I remove the new vdi file and attach the old one to the new Ubuntu Machine? If so when I started it this way I still did not have control of the keyboard and the mouse

    After that the drive will appear as a location in Nautilus, from where you can mount it and copy the files to wherever you want - can you help me understand how I can access Nautilius?

     – Katia Jan 03 '20 at 14:54
  • You add the old VDI as an additional drive in a new VM (assuming that the broken mouse/keyboard issue only affect you old VM and the new VM works as expected). The new VM needs to boot from the new drive. – Takkat Jan 03 '20 at 15:01
  • omg thank you so much! You are a life saver :) I was going to cry :( – Katia Jan 03 '20 at 15:05