DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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1eyeR3d
Posts: 4
Joined: 9. Mar 2018, 17:39

DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by 1eyeR3d »

I get same issue, but with Windows 10 host. Thought it was due to guest being on the HDD so I moved it to the SSD that the host OS is running on, no difference. Still high guest CPU load and it'll run for a few minutes (but painfully slow) then boom, "DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION BSOD". Pulling my hair out. My 2012R2 guest didn't do that. Same HW. May remove and recreate guest. I don't recall if this was actually occurring before the Windows patches.
socratis
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Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
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Location: Greece

Re: DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by socratis »

Post split from "High host CPU load by Windows 2016 guest". High CPU is the only common denominator, all the rest of the symptoms don't match.

We're going to need to see a VM log from a complete VM run:
  • Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state) / Observe error / Shutdown the VM (force close it if you have to).
  • With the VM completely shut down (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log".
  • Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response. See the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
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1eyeR3d
Posts: 4
Joined: 9. Mar 2018, 17:39

Re: DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by 1eyeR3d »

Well, while trying to reproduce the issue and get you a log, I didn't get as far as the actual Windows error in the guest machine. Virtualbox gave it's own error which I was unable to get a screenshot of, but it forced the machine to be turned off and recommended that I get the log and bring it to the VirtualBox community for support. It is attached. Please let me know if this helps and if any, what your findings are.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help!

1ER
Attachments
GODZILLA-2018-03-10-21-36-35.zip
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1eyeR3d
Posts: 4
Joined: 9. Mar 2018, 17:39

Re: DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by 1eyeR3d »

Tried it again today.... Started up the guest machine from full power down. Took forever to boot up. Logged in, even that took a while. Fired up Powershell on guest to see if I can run a few shell comands. It froze.. Less than 3 minutes into it, DPC Watchdog BSOD. Chaching! After the BSOD, it automatically rebooted. Shut er down manually. Grabbed log, zipped, attached here!

Thanks!
Attachments
GODZILLA-2018-03-12-21-18-02.zip
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socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by socratis »

00:00:03.288522 GUI: 2D video acceleration is disabled
And so is the 3D acceleration. Shutdown the VM and enable them in the VM settings » Display. Then re-install the GAs in the guest.
00:00:02.772557 CPUM: Logical host processors: 8 present, 8 max, 8 online, online mask: 00000000000000ff
00:00:02.772558 CPUM: Physical host cores: 4
00:00:02.416966 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000004 (4)
You have assigned all your CPUs to the VM. The host is going to run low on resources, since VirtualBox cares about physical processors (cores), not logical ones (threads). See "CPU Cores versus threads" and "Why is it a bad idea to allocate as many VCPUs as there are physical CPUs?".
00:00:02.170848 File system of 'G:\VirtualBox VMs\GODZILLA\Snapshots' (snapshots) is ntfs
What is "G:\"? Is in an external HD?
00:00:07.030526 supR3HardenedErrorV: supR3HardenedScreenImage/LdrLoadDll: cached rc=VERR_LDRVI_NOT_SIGNED
                fImage=1 fProtect=0x0 fAccess=0x0 cHits=2048 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\
                ATI Technologies\HydraVision\HydraDMH64.dll
Please read really carefully the following FAQ: Diagnosing VirtualBox Hardening Issues for some guidelines/ideas.
00:12:51.540033 AHCI#0: Port 0 reset
00:12:51.541156 VD#0: Cancelling all active requests
00:12:51.541181 VD#0: Request{0x0000000b689e40}:
00:12:51.541182     Type=READ State=ACTIVE Id=0x6 SubmitTs=209230264 {13} Flags=0x2
00:12:51.541184     Offset=20303499264 Size=32768 Left=32768 BufSize=32768
00:12:51.552873 VD#0: Aborted read (0 bytes left) returned rc=VERR_PDM_MEDIAEX_IOREQ_CANCELED
00:12:51.552917 AHCI#0P0: Canceled read at offset 20303499264 (32768 bytes left) returned rc=VERR_PDM_MEDIAEX_IOREQ_CANCELED
That doesn't look particularly good. That's why I asked about "G:\".
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
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1eyeR3d
Posts: 4
Joined: 9. Mar 2018, 17:39

Re: DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by 1eyeR3d »

Alrighty. First off, thanks for your thorough reply. This is very insightful.

So here's some answers to your questions as well as what I've done since reading your response.

* I just turned on 2D and 3D acceleration.

* As for CPUs, please excuse my ignorance and incompetence. I know my AMD FX 8350 has 8 cores, but the log says I have 4 physical host cores? I thought since I had 8 cores, giving the guest 4 CPUs is like saying, "use up to 4 cores if needed". Guess I am way off, but I'll read up on it. I turned it down to 1 for now.

* G:\ drive is not an external HD, but it's a separate internal HDD I use to store a bunch of crap including my VMs. Note: My OS is currently running on a smaller 120GB SSD that is 0nly about 40GB free space right now.

*About VirtualBox Hardening issues. Checked my log, error code 0. So I guess I'm good! However, I did see another topic thread in this forum where a user had the same antivirus as me (Avast) and had to un-check "Enable hardware-assisted virtualization" so I went and did that as well. Also, that hydradmh64.dll appears to be a .dll related to some Hydravision AMD software. My system is an AMD system, but after reading it's for multimonitor management, I may just try uninstalling it and hope I don't eff anything up (I'm happy with native Windows multi-monitor management).

* The last log snip about the G:\ drive... Have no idea what that means. I do know the OS (and Virtualbox) is not installed on this drive. OS drive is SSD, HDD is obviously not. Can you please elaborate on what the error means?

* Oh yeah, installed guest additions too.

After the few changes made from your suggestions, turning off "Enable hardware-assisted virtualization", and installing guest additions, the guest has been up without crashing so we're off on the right foot. It's still a bit slower than I'd like, but once fully booted up, I can RDP to it and play around with Powershell scripts and do stuff without it freezing up. Gonna monitor for another few days and will report back if there are more issues..

Again, thank you!
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: DPC Watchdog Violation BSOD

Post by socratis »

  • 2D, 3D acceleration and GAs installed: That's going to take away some of the software rendering and utilize less CPU on your host, aka making the guest seem faster.
  • G:\ is internal. That's good, I was thinking it was maybe external and some weird power-saving mode was kicking in. G:\ is also where your VDI resides, that's your virtual hard drive. Anything read/written to the VM is going there. So, when I see a timeout error for that, I don't particularly feel right. Can you make sure that no power management shuts down G:\, or puts it into limited mode? Or something like that?
  • Avast? I didn't I see that because the log doesn't have a mention about it, and on top of that your AMD-V is not hindered. Not sure why not. But that may very well be the problem. Antivirus are pests.
  • You could/should uninstall HydraVision. It adds nothing of value. In fact, it really screwed over my setup when I decided to update my Win10 installation with their latest offerings. Major pain.
And finally, for the most difficult question of all: is your AMD FX 8350 a 4- or an 8-core CPU. Well, AMDs and the number of cores have been used in a lawsuit against them. I hadn't actually spent a lot of time on this, so I decided to try it. Here's what I found from left and right:
  • In terms of hardware complexity and functionality, the Bulldozer CMT module is equal to a dual-core processor in its integer power, and to either a single-core processor or a dual core in its floating-point power, depending on whether the code is saturated in floating point instructions in both threads running on the same CMT module, and whether the FPU is performing 128-bit or 256-bit floating point operations. The reason for this is that for each two integer cores, there is a floating-point unit consisting of a pair of 128-bit FMAC execution units. Source: Wikipedia.
  • ...because the Bulldozer module doesn’t incorporate two complete cores. Instead, it shares certain parts of what we’d expect to find as dedicated resources in a typical execution core, including instruction fetch and decode stages, floating-point units, and the L2 cache. Source: Tom's Hardware review.
  • The problem with the FX CPUs is that it is a modular design. Every two physical CPUs shares a single FPU (Floating Point Unit). If both CPUs must use the FPU in each module, then one core basically needs to wait and do nothing until the other core is done using the FPU. Therefore, the FPU itself is a performance bottleneck. Source: Tom's Hardware forums.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
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