VM Freezing or Automatic Power Off

[DW55]

VM_Logs.zip

Contains 2 files: VM10_true_Clone-2018-03-21-04-56-24.log and VBoxHardening.log

(57.32 KiB) Downloaded 13 times

One of two guests is freezing without any error messages. Sometimes the VM freezes momentarily and then shuts down (as if the power cord had been pulled). Other times, it just freezes. When it shuts down, the light blue "Recovery" window opens with two clickable boxes. One box says, "See advanced repair options". The second box says, "Restart my PC". The physical machine is running 64bit Win10 Pro and both VMs are also 64bit Win10 Pro. The freezing VM is called "VM10_True_Clone".

When this VM freezes, I can move the mouse cursor and, no matter what I click on, it has no effect. Task Manager will not launch. My only option is to Power Off in VBox Manager.

This problem began about 8 or 10 days ago. Since then I have been trying to find a pattern, but the freezes seem to be unrelated to the programs I am running. The length of time of normal operations varies before the freezes occur. Sometimes I can use the VM for 30 minutes with no freezes or automatic shutdown and sometimes the freeze happens in less than a minute. In one case, after a very short run with no apps open, the VM froze during normal shutdown when I used the power icon from within the VM. During most of the recent runs of the VM, I did notice before the VM freezes, Task Manager shows 100% Disk usage, however, I saw one freeze when only Task Manager was running and CPU, Memory, and Disk were all at normal (low) levels.

A recent freeze occurred while doing an automatic Windows Update. After several reboots, Cumulative Update for Win10 Version 1703 (KB4088782) was successfully installed. Update Status now indicates "device is up to date".

I did look at some of the other posts on this forum that report a freezing problem, but my setup is not similar. For example, I don't have multiple snapshots and I don't use VDMK. For Power Settings, I set display to NEVER OFF and "Turn off hard disk" after 100 minutes.

I am attaching VM10_true_Clone-2018-03-21-04-56-24.log and VBoxHardening.log in a single archive named VM_Logs.zip.

Versions are VirtualBox-5.2.8-121009-Win.exe and Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-5.2.8.vbox-extpack.

Thank you for your help,

DM

[DW55]

Will anyone help me with this?

Thank you,

DW

[mpack]

Is the guest doing a lot of disk writes? The log consistently shows the heartbeat monitor timing out after what looks like attempts to recover a dead drive (VD#0, the main drive). This is followed by the Hyper-v API reporting a fatal condition in the guest.

I would try:-

1. Check the host drive for errors, these could be stalling the VM.
2. Disable the Hyper-v API the VM settings.
3. (Dubious)Move the system drive onto an IDE controller.
4. Eject the GAs CD. Move the CD drive onto an IDE controller.

[DW55]

Hi mpack,

Thank you for your reply.

Is the guest doing a lot of disk writes?

I download videos occasionally, but this VM will freeze when I'm just browsing websites or even (sometimes) when the machine is idling.

Check the host drive for errors, these could be stalling the VM.

If you are referring to the hard drives on the physical machine, they show no symptoms. Also, they show no faults when scanned with GSmartControl for Windows.

Disable the Hyper-v API the VM settings.

In VB Manager Settings > System > Acceleration, I see Paravirtualization Interface set for Default. Are you asking me to change that to Hyper-v? If so, I don't see how to disable Hyper-v. I do see checkmarks in boxes next to Enable VT-x/AMD-V and Enable Nested Paging. Where do I disable Hyper-v?

(Dubious)Move the system drive onto an IDE controller.

I don't understand what that means. Is IDE controller a physical device? Where do I find it?

Eject the GAs CD. Move the CD drive onto an IDE controller.

OK, I ejected Guest Additions. I looked at Properties of CD Drive (D:), but I don't see mention of IDE controller.

After ejecting GA, the VM has been running for about 20 minutes with no apps loaded except Task Manager. TM shows normal (low) usage percentages. I'm allowing it to run in that state to see if and when it will freeze.

Edit and update:
While writing this message, the VM automatically shut itself down. The only app that was running was Task Manager, and, as I said, TM was showing only normal CPU, Memory, and Disk usage when I last saw it.

Edit Added Later:
I'm reading section 5.1 of the VirtualBox documentation where it says, "After you have created a new virtual machine with the "New Virtual Machine" wizard of the graphical user interface, you will typically see one IDE controller in the machine's "Storage" settings where the virtual CD/DVD drive will be attached to one of the four ports of this controller." On my VM, under Settings > Storage, I see only a SATA controller to which is attached VM_true_Clone.vdi and an Empty CD/DVD drive. I don't see any way to change from SATA to IDE.

DW

[DW55]

Any replies to my post in this topic dated 25. Mar 2018, 00:41 ?

DW

[andyp73]

Any replies to my post in this topic dated 25. Mar 2018, 00:41 ?

As there were no more posts to this question after that date and time then the simple answer is "no". You have to remember that this is a user to user forum and you are relying on the spare time and good will of other VirtualBox users!

You may have to wait for mpack to clarify your question on his comments about disabling the Hyper-V API. To move the disk and CD drive to an IDE controller you need to go to the storage page of the guest settings where you will have something like:

Screen Shot 2018-03-28 at 08.47.20.png (110.39 KiB) Viewed 1695 times

1. Right click on each of the storage devices under the SATA controller (1) and select "Remove attachment"

2. Click on the add controller icon (2) and select "Add IDE Controller"

3. When "Controller: IDE" appears in the list of storage devices, click on the hard-disk icon, select "Choose existing disk" and select your .vdi file

4. Click on the CD drive icon and select "Leave empty" to add an empty CD drive (incase you need it).

-Andy.

[mpack]

I saw no need to repeat myself, having already written what I intended. For example I could not see how "2. Disable the Hyper-v API in the VM settings" could give rise to the question "Are you asking me to enable Hyper-v?". But if someone did have that question then they need only check back to see if that is what I wrote.