Windows 11 freezes shortly after startup on VBox7 MacOS

[H00die]

Perhaps it was a mistake, but I upgraded my windows 10 installation to windows 11 and it seemed to go well which was too good to be true. After the update, windows starts up ok, I can log in and the desktop loads normally and all appears well. I can interact only briefly with the desktop, however, and then the guest freezes (guest unresponsive) not long after - usually while just interacting with the desktop (opening a file browser, going to settings, etc).

If I restart windows in safe mode, this problem doesn't occur and I can interact with the desktop pretty much as long as I want, but that's not very fun. I've done a reinstall of windows, so this should be as vanilla of an install as I think you can get - so I'm not sure what's loading in full mode that's causing the lockup?

Running MacOS Ventura on an Intel macbook pro. I think the correct log attached.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks!
Chris (aka. H00die)

[H00die]

1. Uninstalled and reinstalled virtualbox and guest additions pack on MacOS
2. Booted windows 11 in safe mode
3. Uninstalled guest additions within windows 11 guest
4. Restarted guest in normal mode - boots to desktop fine, no freezes
5. Ran windows update, multiple times, antivirus updates, [dot]net updates, and finally 22H2 cumulative update
6. Reboot windows in normal mode, boots fine, no freezes
7. Insert guest additions CD, and install guest additions within windows 11 guest
8. Reboot in normal mode, desktop comes up, appears fine at first but guest freezes within 30 seconds of bootup
9. Reboot in safe mode, desktop comes up, uninstall guest additions within windows 11 guest
10. Reboot in normal mode, desktop comes up, system works fine - no freezes

To me, this means there's something about the guest additions within the windows guest that's causing the freeze.

[H00die]

1. Changed paravirtualization interface from hyper-v to minimal
2. Disabled nested paging
3. Re-installed guest additions within windows 11 guest
4. System works for a few minutes before going unresponsive (up from less than 30 secs); but still freezes up

New log attached.

[mranonym]

Hi,
I have exactly the same issue under MacOS. I also have no solution. I guess we have to wait for a bugfix update.

[VirtualBox_2019]

I am on Windows, not MAC.

But yeah, my guest Windows 11 22H2 also freezes only when I go to a map drive. I have been running Windows 11 21H2 for the entire year. This is only happening to 22H2. I have tried the release since September, October and now waiting for November but they are all freezing. Not sure if it is the TPM 2.0 thing.

[H00die]

I was able to resolve, temporarily, by downgrading guest additions to v6. Runs fine, no freezes. One downside, however, is I believe that this won't work if you have disk encryption turned on. I have two VMs, one windows 10 (encrypted) one windows 11 (not-encrypted) - after downgrading guest additions I cannot boot the windows 10 vm, but can windows 11. In my case, the windows 10 instance is for backup purposes so is fine for now.

These steps worked for me....

1. First, boot the guest vm in safe mode and uninstall the guest additions using the uninstaller (program files->oracle->...)...and shut it down.

2. Then, go to:

https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.40/

Download both the vbox.extpack and .iso for 6.1.40.

3. Within Vbox7, go to File->Tools->Extension Pack Manager

4. Add the vbox.extpack, when it says "Do you want to downgrade" say 'yes'.

5. Then go to File->Tools->Virtual Media Manager

6. Add the guest additions .iso as optical drive.

7. Then go to your Guest VM Settings, add the new (v6) guest additions optical drive, and remove the previous one (v7).

8. Start your Guest VM, open the guest-additions CD and install as usual - when the installer comes up, be sure it says that you are installing 6.1.40 guest additions...if it still says 7.0.2, you are going right back where you came from, so try again.

9. Restart your guest

10. "Enjoy" your windows 11 experience

[aior]

Check Auto-resize Guest Display(In View Menu), Virtual Screen resize to 1600*900 and scale to 100%，125%，Windows 11 guest is ok on VBox7(7.0.2r154219) MacOS(Ventura 13.0).
But when resize to 1600*900 and scale to 150%, 175%, 200%..., it will be freezed. After uninstall Guest additions, no freezes anymore, Maybe there is a problem on DISPLAY DRIVER additions.
Waiting for new release can resolve it.

[hwertz]

Same in Linux (Ubuntu 22.04.1, on an Intel Sandy Bridge system. Observed both with Win11 21H2 and Win11 22H2.) VB extensions 6.1.34 are fine, 7.0.2 or 7.0.4 result in a freeze shortly after installation (or, in one case, during installation, it locked up before the VBox upgrade completed.) Reboot gets to a functional desktop, until it freezes a bit later. I run gkrellm on my system, and conveniently the VirtualBox VM time shows up as system time (orange) so its easy to distinguish from normal processes (blue) or nice processes (green). When the VM freezes the CPU usage spikes up to 200% and just stays there (with 2 virtual CPUs) or 100% (with 1), whatever goes wrong is spinning out the virtual CPUs rather than leaving them idle.

[farmer jack]

same issue running windows 11 22h2 guest on mac 13.1 host with vbox 7.0.4. runs fine without guest editions. runs fine with guest additions 6.1.40 (thanks H00die) but when latest version 7 guest additions are installed, it hangs at 100% guest CPU.

[latinaangulo]

Same problem on MacOS. Done the job for me.

[scottgus1]

All me-too-ers, please see Hoodie's solution above viewtopic.php?f=2&t=107616#p527364

Post in your own new topic if this does not fix your issue.