I have a virtual machine containing Windows XP SP3.
When I resized the VHD file (and the embedded partition), and tried booting, I got:
A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart
Some notes:
FixBoot and FixMBR don't help.
ChkDsk doesn't help.
The partition is indeed active.
The partition starts at sector 63 (it also did so before the problem) of cylinder 1, head 1, and is marked as type 0x07 (NTFS)
My host OS reads the VHD and the partition completely fine
I'm interested in knowing the cause rather than the fix. So "re-format the disk", "reinstall Windows", etc. aren't valid solutions.
It's a virtual machine after all... I have nothing to lose, so I don't care about fixing it.
I just want to know what's causing this problem, in case I run into it again on a physical machine (which I have done before).
More info:
The layout of the original, dynamic VHD (which works correctly):
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
¦ Disk: 3 MBR/GPT: MBR ¦
¦ Size: 127.00GB CHS: 16578 255 63 ¦
¦ Sectors: 266338304 Disk Signature: 0xEE3EEE3E ¦
¦ Partitions: 1 Partition Order: 1 ¦
¦ Media Type: Fixed Interface: SCSI ¦
¦ Description: Msft Virtual Disk ¦
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------¦
¦Pos Idx Type/Name Size Boot Hide Start Sector Total Sectors DL Vol Label ¦
+--- --- --------- ---- ---- ---- -------------- -------------- -- -----------¦
¦ 1 1 07-NTFS 1.5G Yes No 63 3,148,677 F: <None> ¦
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
The layout of the resized, fixed-size VHD (which doesn't work):
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
¦ Disk: 3 MBR/GPT: MBR ¦
¦ Size: 1.50GB CHS: 196 255 63 ¦
¦ Sectors: 3149824 Disk Signature: 0xEE3EEE3E ¦
¦ Partitions: 1 Partition Order: 1 ¦
¦ Media Type: Fixed Interface: SCSI ¦
¦ Description: Msft Virtual Disk ¦
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------¦
¦Pos Idx Type/Name Size Boot Hide Start Sector Total Sectors DL Vol Label ¦
+--- --- --------- ---- ---- ---- -------------- -------------- -- -----------¦
¦ 1 1 07-NTFS 1.5G Yes No 63 3,148,677 F: <None> ¦
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+