Virtualbox stalls and freezes

[Industrial]

With one particular Windows 7 guest Virtualbox works ok at first but then when I try to do something like uninstall a program it slows to a crawl and then when I try to do anything more significant than move the mouse, it completely freezes. Process Monitor on my host shows very little CPU or I/O activity but it also fails to show the proper amount of RAM Virtualbox is using so I'm puzzled if I can't trust Process Monitor. Note that while the VM is frozen I can't shut it down. If I do, it remains in memory and causes problems for my host as well. I have no choice but to power off the computer when this happens as I can't end the VM process with Task Manager or Process Monitor.

[socratis]

Well, you never followed up to the same exact question that was already had a suggestion a year ago. Also, you are using hacked themes and seem unwilling to revert back to defaults. I'm not sure that I can think of a definite answer about where the problem lies, but others might be able to. But as long as you're not using a default installation, your chances of finding a user in these forums with the exact same configuration as yours, is not that high. Especially if the specific changes to your system are not known.

[Industrial]

What was I supposed to follow up on? "Maybe you should ask on a Windows forum." I have hundreds of programs installed and this is the only one that locks up my entire system when it fails. Yes I am using hacked themes because I don't wanna stare into black text on a white screen, it blinds my eyes. That thread is irrelevant to this one because that specific problem has been fixed and has nothing to do with what I'm facing now because this happens only with certain Guests. Others work flawlessly.

[socratis]

I have hundreds of programs installed and this is the only one that locks up my entire system when it fails.

And some of them may be doing nasty things to the system which are difficult to replicate. Plus, VirtualBox uses directly the hardware of your system, so if something else messes with that pathway, all sorts of things can happen. The possibilities are endless...

[Industrial]

So Vbox uses the kernel or something?

[socratis]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Every application (even Calculator) ends up using the kernel eventually. Indirectly of course. If VirtualBox is making direct calls to the NTKernel DLL? Possibly yes, since it installs kernel drivers and they need to have direct access to the kernel to keep things properly working.

Why do you ask? Are you running a modified kernel?

[Industrial]

I'm trying to understand what's so special about Virtualbox that it can stall my entire system and be completely immune to termination by Process Monitor or Task Manager, not to mention that it's reported to only use 100MB of RAM when I have 1GB assigned to the Guest.

[socratis]

For the first part, as I said, some sort of conflict most probably causes the lockup, but I don't remember it being common enough to have a known, standard answer. For the memory issue, that's the first I've ever heard about it.

[Industrial]

What do you mean by conflict?

[socratis]

Fight for the same resources. USB, network filters, network adapters. Things like that...

[Industrial]

Wait, you told me something very interesting because the VM I was having a problem with was a clone of this physical machine that I wanted to do reversible tests on. If VMs use the same physical USBs without virtualization then this is curious information. Do you think this could have something to do with the freezing?

[socratis]

If VMs use the same physical USBs without virtualization

I'm not quite sure that I understand what you mean. Can you rephrase the question?

[Industrial]

I've been told Vbox shares the USB ports with the host OS. So is tihs the conflict you're talking about?

[socratis]

No, this is not a conflict. I'm talking about conflicts between software that you've installed. And obviously that doesn't include the OS or VirtualBox.

[Industrial]

Software on my host or guest OS?