How can I restore virtualbox settings?

[MrF]

After restoring the host (Windows), is there any easy way for restoring the existing virtual machines?

I can click on "New" and set up a new machine and select an existing vdi and set the memory size and other settings.

Where are all the settings stored?
Can they be reloaded after a fresh install?

 

[Drudenhaus]

My VirtualBox settings are stored in the /<user dir>/.VirtualBox/Machines/<vm name>/<vm name>.xml (the directory structure may be slightly in Windows, but I imagine it has some similarity).

For example here's a snippet from my Windows 7 settings file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Sun xVM VirtualBox Machine Configuration -->
<VirtualBox xmlns="http://www.innotek.de/VirtualBox-settings" version="1.6-linux">
  <Machine uuid="{3773a567-20d9-462c-ac3c-cea9acf23656}" name="Winblows 7" OSType="Windows7_64" lastStateChange="2009-03-25T02:35:09Z">
    <ExtraData>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/SaveMountedAtRuntime" value="no"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastWindowPostion" value="1,23,1678,1023"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/Fullscreen" value="off"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/Seamless" value="off"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/AutoresizeGuest" value="on"/>
    </ExtraData>
    <Hardware>
      <CPU count="1">
        <HardwareVirtEx enabled="true"/>
        <HardwareVirtExNestedPaging enabled="true"/>
      </CPU>
      <Memory RAMSize="512"/>

At the very least you could do a search for the <vm name>.xml and find the file. Hope this helps!

 

[MrF]

Thanks for your post.

virtualbox lets you change the location of Disk folder and Machine folder through the GUI by clicking on "File/Preferences".
But, it does not give you control over the location of the system configuration data (.VirtualBox folder).

The solution is specified in the user's manual under "Advanced topics":
VirtualBox creates this configuration directory automatically, if necessary. Optionally, you can supply an alternate configuration directory by setting the VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable.

I just set this environment variable on Windows 7 and it worked perfectly.

So, the answer to my question is to relocate the .VirtualBox folder to a different partition as described. After a host OS restore, set the environment variable before running virtualbox for the first time and all the virtual machines will be as they were.