Discuss the 6.1.12 release

[arudnev]

Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.12 release here.
You can download the release here.
VirtualBox 6.1.12 is a maintenance release.a

Changelog is here.

[m2i]

Hi,

I just upgraded Windows 7 32 bits VM with new GA => BSOD at startup :
STOP : 0x0000007E
VBoxWddm.sys

To solve this, i went back to GA 6.1.10.

Edit :

I'm using Windows 10 Pro 2004 as host.
This Windows 7 VM only crashes with graphics controller set to VBoxVGA => using VBoxSVGA (recommended by VirtualBox) fixed it.

[dgrigorev]

Hi m2i.
Could you attach VBox.log here?
Are you using Linux, Windows or OSX on your host system?

[m2i]

Hi dgrigorev,

I'm using Windows 10 Pro 2004 as host.
This Windows 7 VM only crashes with graphics controller set to VBoxVGA => using VBoxSVGA (recommended by VirtualBox) fixed it.

Do you need logs anyway ?

Thank you.

[dgrigorev]

Hello m2i.
Yes, please ALWAYS attach a zipped VBox.log when you report a problem on this forum.
It is a general rule that helps to avoid wasting time
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=48476

[m2i]

Hi dgrigorev,

Log attached to my first post.

[JustinH]

"Guest Additions, 3D: New experimental GLX graphics output"

Can someone explain this a bit? What is it solving or improving?

I was hoping it would fix the Win10 v2004 graphics issues, but it appears to not improved that situation.

[scottgus1]

Not by any means definitive, but web-searching "GLX graphics" returns something related to X on Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLX

[Brutalizer]

WARNING! Do not use 6.1.12! It is severly broken! BEWARE!

I upgraded from 6.1.10 and installed Guest additions in a Win7 VM. I have never used 3D graphics in this Win7 VM. When I installed guest additions, the "install 3D graphics" box was prechecked. Usually I uncheck that box, as this is a pure work VM, and I have no need of 3D graphics. This time I forgot to uncheck this box, so guest additions installed 3D graphics in my work Win7 VM. This caused massive problems. I could boot the VM, but after typing my user id and password, the VM crashed. I tried this several times, but it always crashed. And when rebooting, the Win7 wanted me to repair the install. I tried this, but it did not work either. So I downgraded to 6.1.10, but I could still not login to my Win7 VM. At this point I understood that my VM was beyond repair. So, I have lost the Win7 VM. Please investigate?

To get my work documents back, I installed QEMU and could use a loopback device to mount the VDI file, so I could recover my documents. But my VM is broken. Thus, upgrading 3D graphics will destroy your Win7 VM. This is not really optimal.

I would have like an option to downgrade the Guest Additions without logging in to the desktop - or some mechanism to "Delete/remove the installed guest addition" in the menu, so the guest additions would be completely removed. Would this be difficult to do?

[BrianG61UK]

@Brutalizer: No problem when I upgraded my Windows 7 (32 bit) VM.
I always switch on 3D graphics.
My host is Windows 7 (64 bit) what is yours?
What is the bitness of your Windows 7 guest?
It does seem very slightly unstable - and I might go back to 5.2.x to see if that improves it. But it's the same as all the previous 6.1.x releases.

You'll probably not get any further help unless you post your VirtualBox log files for when things went wrong.

[mpack]

WARNING! Do not use 6.1.12! It is severly broken! BEWARE!

Hyperbole doesn't help anyone. Many of us here have been using 6.1.12 for some time already, with 3D enabled, and it is NOT "severely broken".

I too have had problems upgrading a rather old Win7 VM from VBoxVGA with 3D to VBoxSVGA with 3D. That's because 3D acceleration in VBoxVGA was dropped as per deprecation warnings in previous releases. Plus I think I probably should have uninstalled the old GAs before installing these radically different ones.

That made one VM suffering fixable one time only problems. All of your stuff with QEMM and recovering files externally is just user ignorance: you should simply have done what you would in real life: boot in safe mode, uninstall the errant third party software (the GAs in this case), boot again in a basic mode, sort out the remaining problems.

None of this consitututes "severely broken 6.1.12". The important changes weren't even new in this release.