virtualbox.org

Hello,
I am a long-time user of VirtualBox and while there are always some small issues, this is my first time posting because I'm stumped. I bought a new laptop from System76 (darter pro) and have kept their Pop!_OS 20.10 as the host system since CentOS is going the way of Fedora. For some reason related to a DATATYPE_MISALIGNMENT, a Windows 10 guest keeps randomly crashing. Note that it works just fine on a new thelio desktop from System76 with the same Pop!_OS. Also note that any other OS seems okay -- CentOS8, Rocky linux, Oracle linux, ..., even Windows 7. I have poured over this and other forums, tried changing the graphics controller, tried every paravirtualization interface (even none), 1 CPU vs 2, different Chipsets, enabling/disabling I/O APIC, Nested Paging, 3D acceleration, .... I already sent the laptop back and they replaced the motherboard, but it still crashes due to the datatype misalignment. I even installed Oracle linux as the host (must be compatible with VirtualBox!), but still no dice. Finally, I used Virtual Machine Manager, and that was stable but I was unable to get it to share disks, which is a non-starter for me.

I'm not holding up much hope, but any advice/suggestions would be much appreciated.

Host information: darter pro laptop from System76, 15.5 GiB memory, 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7@2.80GHzx8, Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2), running Pop!_OS 20.10 (64-bit), GNOME version 3.38.3.
Guest information: every version of Windoze 10 (Home, Home Pro, Education, Pro, etc.). Again, note that any other guest OS works, including Windoze 7.

One thing I see:

00:00:00.690477 VirtualBox VM 6.1.18_Pop r142142 linux.amd64 (Mar 22 2021 15:56:49) release log
00:00:00.691553 Installed Extension Packs:
00:00:00.691557 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (Version: 6.1.22 r144080; VRDE Module: VBoxVRDP)

Virtualbox and Extension Pack have to match.

Also you're running Pop's fork of Virtualbox, and we don't technically support the forks. Not that the fork is the cause of the problem, though.

This might be a problem:

00:00:00.866561 Full Name: "11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz"

I have a recollection that newer Intel CPUs may introduce things that need more work by the devs. Try a test build.

You're encountering a well-known, yet unsolved problem. See 20180#comment:8 for the current workaround.

Thank you both for you super-quick replies!

I tried using the snapshot build, scottgus1, but it didn't install on the first try; before I figured it out, I realized that VMWare Player is free for non-commercial use, so I tried that. It worked! So I'm going to stick with that, at least for now. fth0, I will try the workaround when I have some time to kill and get around to re-installing VirtualBox (this time with the correct extension pack -- I've done so many things in the past couple of weeks I clearly lost track of such a basic thing).

Thanks again for you helpful and speedy replies. Very much appreciated.