Machine suddenly inaccessible [SOLVED]

[John Perry]

BTW, you've got my last name spelled wrong.

Oops! Sorry, Greg. The last time I replied to list, Tbird didn't copy
the message and I had to copy manually and edit it myself. This time it
did; maybe it was because I was expecting to have to do the same and had
copied before I hit the reply list button. I think it's because I get
the digest edition of the list.

There were two: opensuse 13.1.vbox-prev and opensuse 13.1.vbox-tmp. Both gave exactly the same result.
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Cannot register the DVD image 'C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso' {27be2462-77a0-468a-a74f-42dfd736e305} because a CD/DVD image 'C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso' with UUID {327a0f62-986c-4de5-9564-e8400070cc0a} already exists.
Result Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057)
Component: VirtualBox
Interface: IVirtualBox {fafa4e17-1ee2-4905-a10e-fe7c18bf5554}

Can you go into the virtual media manager, and look under the optical
disks tab? If the iso in question is there, see if you can remove
it. If you're able to remove it, try replacing the .vbox file again,
and your guest should hopefully work again at that point.

This worked perfectly. When I removed the (3!) existing guest addition
iso's, the machine came right up and told me I needed to update them
from 4.2.1.8 (!) for best results. First, though, I had to release the
versionless VBoxGuestAdditions.iso from a previous, now unused VM so i
could then remove it. Then I renamed the "opensuse 13.1.vbox-tmp" file
from 2/26 (-prev was from 2/23) and restarted the manager. Came up with
the machine accessible; machine started just fine. And it even came up
with my six desktops and all their applications intact, just as if I'd
never left my keyboard! And the 4.3.8 guest additions was there ready to
compile (well, some iso was there -- how do I make sure it's actually
4.3.8 r92456? I'd installed guest additions with each update since first
building the machine).

Thanks so very much! Someday I may try KVM or Xen again, but VB is
working too well for me now to bother. Suse runs just as fast as W7.
If I could get suse to boot on this new Samsung laptop, suse would be my
main system and W7 the VM, but even that has receded in importance to
me, since I can't tell the difference now between W7 and suse in
performance.

john