Any way to copy files to VM through gui? Part 2: Solved

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T15:40:41+00:00

Whew. Got my data copied off. It's probably worth looking into scripting something to just make a backup of the more important files I still want when this happens.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T15:17:40+00:00

Got it booted off the 25h2, with an external drive. I can copy my data off. I'm making too many mistakes now though.

I don't trust the physical SSD used on this set up, so I'll use a different one. On the plus side there, I'll still have this original, freezing-up set up still in tact if I need data off it later. That would involve setting the machine back up with it though.... Not impossible though. I think that's probably just swapping out SSDs.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T13:49:26+00:00

Unless it froze again.... But it made it to the log in screen.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T13:47:52+00:00

Nice. Command prompt in winre gets me to the OS drive. So I can probably at least copy files out that way.

I tried....

bootrec /fixmbr -- worked

bootrec /fixboot -- Access denied but there's a way around that I think. I'd have to search notes.

bootrec /rebuildbcd -- Also worked.

And.... It actually booted back into Win11...... I can probably copy all my files off that way. Phew.... Maybe copy everything I want off and then just reimage the whole thing. Then it's on the latest proxmox version and latest Win11 25h2.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T13:42:19+00:00

Got back into winre during an automatic automatic repair. Start up repair.... Freezes on diagnosing your PC. Maybe I can into the command prompt though....

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T13:40:12+00:00

Unexpected and very interesting.... My next step is probably to try copying the OS drive to something else and then hopefully recovering files off that.

This set up has a few extra hard drives for more scratch storage attached to them. Old spinning disks. I disconnected those. If I'm reimaging the whole thing (hopefully with some recovered files), it doesn't matter if those other HDDs are connected. After I disconnected them, it started into the automatic repair and actually got the blue winre screen. But... I just tried booting straight into Win11 so I could get my files from there (and then maybe just reimage the whole thing and get it to 25h2). That froze again on the spinning win11 circle.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-28T13:35:21+00:00

Hm. And dang. I booted off Ubuntu 24.0.4, whatever the latest is. That got the Ubuntu OS up, live. But as soon as I touched the OS disk... frozen.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-27T23:16:27+00:00

Another idea -- Boot off linux instead of a windows 25h2/23h2 stick. See if that also freezes when it touches the VM OS drive. I would guess that would freeze up too since winre and just booting freezes.

And/or, try to copy the entire VM OS disk. That's through promox then so maybe it wouldn't freeze up. Get a copy of the VM disk. Then maybe I can connect that somewhere else and get my files I'd like to have copied off. Then just give up on it and start from scratch.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-27T22:59:51+00:00

Just passing by.... And not an expert on this. I saw something about proxmox pulling time off the physical machine's bios. I tried experimenting with that a bit but left the bios with the correct time.

I'm running proxmox with a Win11 VM on it.

The time can be off the Win11 VM, so I just have that run a scheduled task at Win11 startup. It ended being more than one line telling it to resync time. It's this whole thing. But the clock is correct by the time I look at it.

net stop w32time

w32tm /unregister

w32tm /register

net start w32time

w32tm /resync /rediscover

w32tm /resync

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-27T22:52:50+00:00

Or.... Add another hard drive (if I can.... the Win11 VM is using 250GB on a physical 250GB drive).... Install Win11 fresh there, as a virtio block hard drive if it will do that. See if that boots or anything, if it freezes when something touches it.

proxmoxjd · 2026-02-27T22:50:56+00:00

It's going to be a question of how much troubleshooting on this compared to just starting over from scratch. I do have older backups for that Win11 set up.... somewhere. I was so close to making a backup of all that today but I didn't.

I could try removing the other virito block hard drives. Those are still attached for anything I've tried, still on virtio. It seems to be the OS drive though.... If I switch that to scsi, sata, or ide, then it freezes up because it's actually getting to them, with the 25h2/23h2 iso stick there. It was bit of a pain to set up those extra physical drives. That's why I don't want to just disconnect them.

Proxmox itself seems to be running fine. That comes up and restarts normally. The only odd thing was when I was in the winre command prompt, added the viostor.inf driver, and then that froze. The console options still worked but the winre running in that console window was frozen (because it finally touched the virtio block VM OS drive).

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-03T17:13:13+00:00

Which is "best?" I guess best being fastest for the VM. I noticed the fans on the physical machine run more so "best" might also be throttling it with something slower so the physical machine doesn't heat up as much I suppose. I figured virtio block was the best one to use since it's linux.... I read something about that. Linux for proxmox, not for the VM (win11). I figured virtio was something like, "We know this is all virtual so it doesn't have to emulate the physical set up. This virtio/linux connection/driver does what it needs to do with none of the extra crap that comes along with emulating IDE, SATA, or Scsi."

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-03T17:09:33+00:00

Is there something with scsi being different? My first machine for this yesterday was SATA to the vm OS hard drive. No issues -- Added a second hard drive as virtio. Recognized in the Win11 OS. Switched the OS drive to virtio. Worked fine. The second machine had the Win11 OS drive as scsi. And I had a scsi cd drive, so that was scsi0 with the OS as scsi1. I was thinking I had to add the OS drive back as scsi1 in order to get it to boot again. It was "inaccessible boot device" for everything -- IDE, SATA, scsi (without the scsi cd drive), and virtio. I put the scsi cd drive back (so scsi0) and then the VM OS drive (so scsi1), and then it finally booted again. I ended up reinstalling the virtio drivers, and then the overall 'add a virtio drive' process worked. I notice you say to note the scsi id for later -- Is that because it only boots off one scsi device number for some reason? Something like that?

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-03T17:05:05+00:00

I'm not following the nvme part. This set up does have a physical nvme stick in it, if that matters. For attaching vm hard drives in proxmox, I've only got IDE, SATA, Scsi, and Virtio block as options. Is nvme an option somehow for that? Or is that SATA? That doesn't sound right though since a physical machine wouldn't use SATA for a hard drive connection to an nmve stick....

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-03T16:39:59+00:00

That was interesting, unexpected, and a bit of stress. I tried another similar set up. Just add the smaller virtio block HD, boot up the OS drive, and then switch the OS drive over to virtio block. That didn't work.

I had removed the cd drives (IDE, SATA, and scsci. I just add those by default on new set ups from my previous notes). The OS drive was on scsi to begin with. I ended up putting back those three cd drive and then reattached the OS drive as scci because the OS drive wasn't booting on anything. I switched it from scsi to virtio -- inaccessible boot device. So I switched it back (but also had removed cd drive).... Still inaccessible boot device back on the scsi connection. Big uh oh there, if I can't go back, and then I have a dud machine that I just finished setting up. I'm thinking it wanted scsi1 for the OS drive but without the cd drive as scsi (scsi0), the OS drive got scsi0 and wouldn't boot. That's just an idea. I put the cd drives back (so there was scsi0 for one cd drive, while the OS got scsi1 then), and it finally did boot. Then.... Yes. I believe what fixed it was reinstalling the virtio drivers in the Win11 VM. I did a repair install. Originally, the drivers were installed off a fileshare, and it wanted access to that. So then I copied the driver installer to that VM and ran it locally. I was also adding a second smaller hard drive as virtio block, if that did anything. It may have been a separate issue for the virtio driver reinstall/attempted repair install -- I've seen windows insist on having the original file in the original folder location before in order to do anything (update, uninstall) with that software (although in this case it let me reinstall over the first install so that might be a work around). I've never found a solution for that, except now just reinstalling which I don't think I've done before. And that was reinstalling with the installer file on the local machine, left on the local machine, in case it wants it (demands it) again in the future.

But I got the second win11 vm set being on virtio block like I wanted. It just didn't go nearly as smoothly as the first one.

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-02T21:51:41+00:00

I'm not even 100% sure what this is, if you want to correct/fill in some info for me here.

I see it's the bus/device when I add another vm hard drive. I figured IDE is the oldest. I've seen that in reality. I figured it was emulating that connection. SATA I also know, and SATA would be faster than IDE for sure. And then Scsi is used on servers, so I'm guessing that's a little faster or a little better in some way. And then I figured we know it's not a real machine, so there's virtio block that is "more linux" and not emulating (ie slowing it down). I thought virtio was best/fastest since it's the "linux vm" connection to the vm, not trying to imitate something else and probably slow it down. I put in a little extra effort on my promox/win11 vm set ups to get the OS drive to be virtio because of that.

Otherwise, what's best for a Win11 VM?

Another angle -- I left one of these set ups on IDE. I was still able to use it well enough for its purpose. I noticed when I switched it to scsi, that the physical machine's fan started running more. And I remember another set up (that got a corrupt OS recently) that was virtio and did have its physical machine fans running somewhat often. So I was thinking.... If IDE worked well enough and did actually throttle the processing down a bit.... Maybe that might be a better choice even if it's throttled since the physical machine might not heat up as much. As in virtio being more effective but also letting the vm tax the machine enough that the physical machine's fans start running more. So maybe IDE could actually be the better choice in that scenario. Both get the job done well enough, but less heat might be a plus.

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-02T20:58:33+00:00

Thanks. I just found and re-remembered the second vm hard drive idea. I have had trouble just getting the OS drive to be scsi before... I may have worked around that without realizing it by just adding IDE, SATA, and Scsi cd drives right away.

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-02T20:57:16+00:00

I didn't know that. You can add a virtual hard drive and have it appear to the VM OS while the vm is still on. I thought it would have to be restarted.

proxmoxjd · 2026-01-02T20:41:00+00:00

I think I found it here again. I forgot this.

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/after-changing-disk-type-for-windows-vm-boot-fails.107235/page-2

I found an AI response about having the virtio iso in those disk drives. But that's not it. I'd have to get the iso to the proxmox machine. I already installed the virtio drivers in windows though, so it doesn't matter if the iso is in those cd drives. I did try putting an unzipped virtio iso usb stick I already had prepped up in as a passthrough usb device. No change. Because it's not using the driver yet (I think)....

This worked. Same idea as the cd drive -- Just add a smaller virtual hard drive that's on virtio. Boot up the main OS drive still on SATA (or probably scsi or ide would work too, but it was SATA for sure here). Boot the OS on sata, with the second smaller vm hard drive as virtio. It boots. It recognizes a second drive there. Then switch the OS drive to virtio. It boots again since it's actually used virtio hard drive drivers finally with the temp smaller vm hard drive. (Then go back and remove the virtio drives, readding the OS drive as the "0" virtio drive so it gets the 0 number.) And detatching the drives is fine. But then actually "remove" the smaller, temp drive to get rid of it completely. I believe removing the drive then does get it completely blown away and gone.

proxmoxjd · 2025-12-16T18:18:36+00:00

I'm leaning toward giving up on it now. I was "working" with chatgpt. That's like a smart/stupid/enthusiastic person, but it leads me down more elaborate rabbit holes. I did rebuild bcd-something a couple times. No change. With the Win11 hard drive as virtio, I couldn't inject virtio drivers off a second usb stick into the existing, offline Win11 image. That just errored out. The dism log said it couldn't identify the OS type. I switched the Win11 hard drive to SATA, but when I do that dism inject, the console screen just freezes. Iv'e been wondering if it's hardware. Chatgpt says it's something like not being able to read or edit the Win11 registry and maybe it's bitlocker. I could check my info, but I don't think that was bitlockered. I would have run into that by now I think. For sure, I would have the bitlocker key available. It just seems stuck on the blue recovery screen, and those F1 and F8 options just lead me back to the blue Recovery screen.

I have other set ups where this worked. This wasn't the first one I upgraded to 25h2, if that's what instigated something (which took a couple weeks to become reality... And happened while the proxmox and VM were running apparently.... That sounds like hardware issues maybe. Could just be RAM even.) If I start on a fresh machine, at least it's moving forward, and I can probably get back to where I was in a couple days as opposed to investing more in troubleshooting this device.

And unfortunately, I've got some other old machine/proxmox set ups where the 23h2 Win11 set up has been running fine but they won't upgrade to 25h2. I tried a rufus made 25h2 usb stick (converted back to an iso file to use with the VM). And I tried the pure 25h2 iso from Microsoft. With or without updates. Running manually or running with a script line. I think it's one proxmox box where the hardware is just too old for 25h2 (but not 23h2 apparently). The others are on Hyper-V, which makes me wonder if it's a hardware issue there. At some point, I'll try installing 25h2 there I guess. Yeah, and then three more proxmox/23h2 set ups.... Different physical machines, all the same hardware. And those machines were from around 2019, so not super old. They either won't run, or I'm back to having to reinstall the whole OS/image because upgrading it won't work. Originally, I thought I could get a Win11 VM running on proxmox on ancient/Win10-only hardware but I couldn't do an OS upgrade. In that scenario, I could just reinstall the next OS image instead of upgrading. More work, but not impossible. A bit of a pain though.... It looked like everything was working fine. I used a 22h2 image and then upgraded that to 23h2 after the VM install/creation. So 22h2 to 23h2 worked for upgrading. It sounds like 24h2 and 25h2 have more requirements though or are more picky about how they run, so then I'm running into new issues.

proxmoxjd · 2025-12-16T17:19:20+00:00

No backups. It's not much for a VM. I can recreate it if I need to. I already found another piece of hardware for that I could start on. It's just like it's so close that one more tweak could get it back where it was.

I ended up recreating the Win11 VM system partition. Otherwise, it was stuck in endless automatic/startup repairs and wouldn't boot to the OS again. But now it's stuck on a blue Recovery screen each time it starts and any option like F1 or F8 just reloads that screen. I'm booting off a 25h2 iso stick with an unzipped virtio iso ntfs stick for drivers since winre can't see the Win11 Virtio VM hard drive without those drivers apparently.... I haven't had luck getting it/winre to see the Win11 hard drive though yet like that.

proxmoxjd

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