VirtualBox Fatal: no bootable medium found! System Halted

I just downloaded and tried to add new virtual machine, but it gives me an error. I couldn't find the solution. it seems that VM can not find the OS. I don't know how to resolve.

Error is:

FATAL: No bootable medium found! System Halted.

I have Vista and latest version of Sun VirtualBox.

virtualbox

Iguramu

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation:

I just needed to remove an empty item in the list of connected storage devices, and after the ISO was right under the main hard disk drive, everything worked fine. – GDP2 – 2018-10-24T09:20:50.687

– RBT – 2019-01-29T12:16:46.400

First get an MD5 sum of the ISO and check it against the md5 provided by ubuntu to make sure the ISO is not corrupt. You have the guest additions loaded as an IDE drive. Can you remove it in case it is trying to boot from it. – Paul – 2011-10-28T04:36:17.020

Answers

This is now working fine. The virtual machine should point to the .iso image of the OS. This can be done by following steps:

In the Virtual Machine window (where this error is appearing), go to "Devices" tab --> CD/DVD Devices --> More CD/DVD images --> select the location where the .iso image for this OS is stored.

Now Power off the machine and again start from the Virtual box. Your Machine should start.

iammilind

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 282

Hi the Answer is simple.

Go to settings > Storage > Storage Tree

and mount your image/CD/DVD drive under Controller: IDE (Don't use SATA)

Either add a new CD/DVD device or use the existing one.

Jqmx

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 41

2The important point is to use IDE as for some reason it does not work with SATA. – Chris – 2014-10-23T08:44:32.053

SATA works if it is the first controller. It won't work if the first controller is IDE. I don't know why, maybe someone is able to explain this strange behavior. – scai – 2016-09-04T09:49:00.930

The reason that VirtualBox can't find the OS is that there is no OS.

In order to boot a virtual machine to an OS, you have to install an OS first by mounting an ISO or physical CD with a bootable OS install (eg, an Windows or Linux installation disc)

SLaks

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 7 596

Can you tell me whats wrong with my settings: screenshot I am trying to install it from ISO, but it is giving me "No bootable medium found error" when I boot up the VM in virtual box.

– Maha – 2017-05-07T20:18:27.100

Why isn't this done during the generic setup routine... – unami – 2019-10-15T14:21:05.027

@unami: Because operating systems are not generic. – SLaks – 2019-11-06T21:59:38.467

When you first create a Virtual Machine with VirtualBox, there is no OS installed on the HD image. You have to have the VM mount a bootable ISO image to install the OS from.

Justin Niessner

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 259

In my instance, I needed to have two .iso images attached as optical devices during an install. I found that after adding the second image to the IDE controller, VirtualBox ceased to recognize the first image as bootable.

After much trial and error, I was able to boot once again by choosing Settings > Storage, selecting the bootable .iso image and changing its attributes to IDE Primary Slave.

For what it's worth, I also had to change the attributes of the other .iso image device to IDE Secondary before the Primary Slave option was available for the bootable image. I imagine the order in which you add the images to the storage tree may determine which attributes are assigned to them.

DaveGauer

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 123

This is essentially what my issue was. I had an empty item in the list, and the removal of it fixed the problem. – GDP2 – 2018-10-24T09:22:17.573

Solution: Try a different architecture type of iso.

I was able to solve this problem by changing the ISO image. I was trying to install cent os 7 with virtual box on mac 10.11.6 (el-capitan ). First I had downloaded the minimal set up from here: https://wiki.centos.org/Download

There are setups available for different architecture types. I first tried with aarch64. But could not get past the same error: Fatal: no bootable medium found! System Halted

Tried everything but never solved. Then I tried "i386" . And it worked.

Vishwas G

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 111

New MacOS Operative System are not ready out of the box.

My solution was to get rid of the Catalina.iso, then:

Download an High Sierra.app
Turn it into an High Sierra.dmg
Turn it into an High Sierra.iso
Select "High Sierra" from the out-of-the-box dropdown menu at the beginning of the setup page

Newer OS like Mojave or Catalina are not ready yet, they will probably be ready in a few months/year. This is the price to pay for free software.

Francesco Mantovani

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 248

This is normal. You need to load a medium (normally, the ISO file of a bootable CD or DVD) into your virtual machine. Your DVD software might be able to create an ISO file of your Vista DVD. Otherwise, use a Linux distribution, for example Knoppix for a first boot.

Pekka

Posted 2009-11-11T21:13:10.820

Reputation: 2 239

2An ISO isn't strictly necessary, since you can configure VBox to boot from the actual dvd drive. So if you have a bootable CD/DVD, you should be good. That said, installing from an ISO file is much quicker. – Joe Internet – 2009-11-11T23:47:40.410

Good to know! - – Pekka – 2009-11-12T01:34:36.610