Technical Tip: Checklist to investigate why custom VM failed to activate

[Sandeep_FTNT]

Description

Custom VM might fail to activate if custom VM is not configured properly or does not meet the requirements.

This article provides check list to investigate it.

Solution
-Run Virtual box and check the following settings:

Make sure Network 'adapter type' is set as per admin guide for the respective Operating system of custom VM requirement

Disable Audio driver as described in the admin guide:

Go to Audio, and uncheck the Enable Audio checkbox.

   
Disable USB driver as described in the admin guide:
Go to USB, uncheck the Enable USB Controller checkbox.

-Run the custom VM in Virtual-Box and make sure that Windows and Office are activated.
Example: For windows 10, Settings -> Update & security and Activation

-Disable UAC and firewall.
-Check if the Ethernet interfaces are in right order, and change the network adapter names to eth0 and eth1.
-Swap eth0 and eth1 order if necessary.
-Assign data drive to any letter other than 'D', if there is any.
-Enable Administrator account and clear the password

-autorun.bat is under 'Startup for All Users' folder. It's the starter to load launcher.bat in drive 'D', which is a CD-ROM drive that mounts an ISO file.

'\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup'
     ==================================================
     @echo off
     :checker
     if not exist d:\launcher.bat (
     echo Wait for d:\launcher.bat
     rem sleep 5
     ping -n 5 127.0.0.1 >nul
     goto checker)

start d:\launcher.bat

-Get the VM UUID in Windows: 

mic csproduct get "UUID

-Shutdown the VM and exit VirtualBox program.

Get the Hardware UUID and MD5 checksum of the VM.

Replace the VM name to fit your requirement:

Example for windows WIN7X86VM

VM=WIN7X86VM
vboxmanage showvminfo $VM | grep "Hardware UUID:"
md5sum $VM

-Make sure following value matches:

wmic csproduct get "UUID"
vboxmanage showvminfo $VM | grep "Hardware UUID:"MD5SUM

- Customized image is too big that system doesn’t have enough memory. However, usually sandbox will show up a warning message and block the big clone number. User can reduce its size with Windows Disk Defrag tool.