creating a disk image on the Mac desktop

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Brian - 30 Jan 2008 14:20 GMT

well my newest virtual machine has crashed now too, the black Windows
screen (the old-school DOS window with that 1981 type-face...for
nostalgia's sake someone should make a nice little emulator of DOS 1.1
and MS-Basic then it could be updated to the 'PC/XT' version with the
blue screen, ooooohhhhhh)

but I digress, the black Windows screen reports a Fatal Error on
BOOT.INI

I made yet another new virtual machine, in the process of letting the
Windows Updater update itself so I can update Windows (anyone remember
the Ronco Product Destroyer Destroyer?).

Right now, I can't use the PC List window / Settings "Mount Drive"
option at all on my old virtual machines. Neither can I access them
via the Transfer command from the PC menu in VPC. (That bombs out with
Mac OS reporting an "Unexpected Error").

The first time this happened, I ended up with a disk image of the
Windows machine on the Mac Desktop when I was examining some of the
VPC files using the 'Show Package Contents'; I think I double-clicked
on something (the basedrive file?) and that resulted in a drive being
mounted on Mac desktop. Anyone know which of the package contents
could lead to that happening?

six weeks to go trying to run QuickBooks on an iBook G4 before I can
purchase a MacBook Pro and move on up to Parallels and probably Vista
(shudder)...but I don't want to surrender and just buy a $500 Windows
laptop just to run the robust Windows QuickBooks, but I might have to
throw in that red challenge flag or towel or something...it's sudden-
death tax season overtime now

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Brian - 30 Jan 2008 17:46 GMT

meanwhile I am trying to get a new machine running. I am trying to set
it up on an external FireWire drive, because I don't have any space
left internally on my iBook ... mostly because I don't want to delete
my previous virtual machine until I recover more stuff out of it. I
moved all the personal data I could off of the iBook, and started this
process with about 7 gigs free on the iBook and 60 on the external
drive. I have Windows completely installed and updated and running
fine on the external drive; now it is time to install QuickBooks. The
installation process of that ("Now installing .NET 1.1") has somehow
eaten up all of the space on my laptop and is about to bomb. I'm
guessing, again, that might be a result of temporary internet files
from all the updating I've been working on but I don't know.

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Brian - 30 Jan 2008 20:26 GMT

this is driving me completely insane. I realized I could move my
iPhoto library off the laptop's internal drive, gaining me 3 more
Gigs. The QuickBooks install has been running for nearly three hours
now and is just about to eat up the extra 3gb too....

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Brian - 30 Jan 2008 21:13 GMT

> this is driving me completely insane. I realized I could move my
> iPhoto library off the laptop's internal drive, gaining me 3 more
> Gigs. The QuickBooks install has been running for nearly three hours
> now and is just about to eat up the extra 3gb too....

OK well I found some sort of problem on the Mac side. I don't know if
this is related to Virtual PC at all, but in Library/Logs/Console/501
(really no idea what "501" is) there is a file called console.log.0
that is now 17.32 GB in size.

Also, when poking around with Activity Monitor, I found that there was
a process called 'hdiutil' that was eating up 50% of the CPU, and
would not go away after I quit VPC and took a Force Quit to get rid
of....

off to Google to see what I can find elsewhere

so much for getting the 4th Quarter 940 in the mail today.
Arrrgggghhhh.

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Brian - 30 Jan 2008 21:48 GMT

apparently there are few different bugs that can make your Log files
take up all of your space, but the most common one has something to do
with iTunes and it's preferences file:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4961687#4961687

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Brian - 30 Jan 2008 23:46 GMT

but this probably was generated by VPC:

hdiutil: attach failed - no mountable file systems
The disk image you are opening may be damaged and could damage your
system.
Are you sure you want to open this disk image? (Y/N)
Are you sure you want to open this disk image? (Y/N)

this is from the console.log file; it went on for another 17 gigabytes
of the same. I think I have my QBooks file rescued on to the Mac
desktop and won't need to attach to any more old Windows volumes. I
hope.

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Brian - 31 Jan 2008 15:42 GMT

> The first time this happened, I ended up with a disk image of the
> Windows machine on the Mac Desktop when I was examining some of the
> VPC files using the 'Show Package Contents'; I think I double-clicked
> on something (the basedrive file?) and that resulted in a drive being
> mounted on Mac desktop. Anyone know which of the package contents
> could lead to that happening?

well I have this sorted out. When you try the PC List / Settings /
Mount Drive Now
five things can happen:

1) the image mounts nicely on the Mac Desktop
2) a process called 'hdiutil' or something similar goes into a loop
which can eventually
fill up the current console.log file to the tune of gigabytes and
gigabytes full of the
same error message
3) VPC can freeze ("Not Responding") and you will need to do a Force
Quit
4) It will report an error message ("Unexpected Error" or "Drive could
not be mounted")
a) and then when you retry you may discover it actually did
mount ("Drive is already mounted")
hint: look at the root Mac machine level "User Name's
Computer", not just on your desktop
b) you'll just get one of the above error messages each
time

I suggest keeping the utility Activity Monitor running before you try
complex VPC recovery activities. (I keep that program in the Dock,
myself.) If 'hdiutil' is looping, you can make it stop by Inspecting
the process with Activity Monitor and selecting Force Quit there. If
trying to mount an image makes VPC itself hang ("Not Responding"),
you will also be able to see this in the A.Monitor process list.

The good news is that when I woke up this morning I realized today was
the 31st, and I will get my tax info out on time .... I had a back-up
of the QB data. I lost one week of payroll and 2-3 customer invoices.

I think my second virtual Windows Machine crashed because I was
running it off an external FireWire drive. While the Mac was asleep,
the cable was disconnected, which woke up the Mac; but Windows and
QBooks never recovered. I can access the drive images of this second
machine just fine (my original, bloated, 1st machine's images cause
all the problems) and get at my QB file, but on my new third machine
with fully updated Windows and QuickBooks I can't open that file as it
was open during the crash.

I would still like to try and recover a few things in my original
machine but I'm about ready to give up on that.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Virtual PC / January 2008

creating a disk image on the Mac desktop