Win XP guest freezes after welcome screen

[Shashinka]

Hello everybody !

My setup is :
- VBox version = 5.1.8
- Host = Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
- Guest = Windows XP Pro SP3 32 bit
For more than one year it has been working absolutely fine, but I don't use the VM very often and lately the host has undergone many updates without me checking on the VM operability.

Now I discover that my VM crashes on start. I do the following :
- I reinstall VBox "on top of the existing" and take this opportunity to upgrade to version 5.1.22, complete with bells and whistles
- At this stage VBox starts OK
- the guest boots OK, I obtain the sequence of screens up to "Welcome", the XP desktop appears (my personalized wallpaper) and... everything hangs at this point
- No bars, no icons, just that wallpaper looking at me
- Stopping the guest by "Shutdown signal" produces no result other than the "End Program - explorer.exe" box, which itself is inoperative ("End now" produces no result)
- Only way of stopping the guest is by "Power off".

Is there a good soul who could explain to me what is happening ?
I had a sudden inspiration remembering that recently I had swapped the host machine's virtual memory from my system disk (an SSD) to the data disk, for a longer life of the SSD. So I have just tried to reinstate the old setup, with some paging file capacity in the system disk : to no avail !

So the problem remains and I would be very very grateful for a hint of assistance.
Thanks for your attention !

[socratis]

Follow a "start the VM from cold-boot" / "observe error" / "shutdown the VM" cycle. With the VM shut down completely (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).

[Shashinka]

Thank you socratis, I will do that as soon as I have sufficient free time... Let us rendez-vous here in 24 hours, if you can.

In the meantime : I did something that can help (?) understand the nature of the problem ; I punched F8 at the right moment and was able to ask for a start of XP in Safe Mode.
Result : the XP guest started OK, with black desktop and all the bars and icons.
I had a look at "Event viewer" and saw that during my attempts of yesterday nothing was logged as an "Error" ; only "Informations".

Glad I have your support !

[Shashinka]

Hello socratis

Just did an observation cycle as you had suggested, this 23rd of June at about 22:34 local time.
Zip file is attached.
Also take the time to see the post I placed just before this one ; maybe it helps making some sense out of this situation.
And anyhow, many thanks !

[louhoang]

Here is the configuration that does not freeze:

HOST OS: Windows 7 64 bit (Previously: Windows XP 32 bit)
HOST OS: 8 GB of available memory (Previously: 3GB in Windows XP 32 bit)
GUEST OS: 1 CPUS/core (Previously: 2 CPUSs/cores)
HOST OS: VirtualBox version 4.0.8
HOST MACHINE: Turned off hyper threading

My gut reaction for "what caused the freezing?". Here are the two credible causes:

I think the lack of memory caused the freezing.
The host OS put the guest OS into paging... and then the guest OS didn't technically freeze... it just got really slow.
OR Using 2 cores in the guest OS caused weird freezing in the VM.
I think this is much less likely. Because I was using 2 cores (less than the total number of the host machine)... which is well supported feature in VirtualBox.

[Shashinka]

@ socratis & louhoang :

I have the pleasure to say that louhoang's "gut feeling" was the right felling.
After reading him I just did those 2 tweaks in the VBox management panel :
- set the guest's memory at 8192 MB instead of 4096 MB previously
- limited the guest to 2 CPU cores instead of 4 previously
And bang ! It works !

Remains one mystery issue for socratis to explain if he cares : how come everything had worked splendidly with the old settings for more than one year ?

Anyway many thanks to the two of you who took time to analyze my problem

[socratis]

how come everything had worked splendidly with the old settings for more than one year ?

I wouldn't know unless I saw a VBox.log from that time. Speaking of, please do not convert the log files to DOCX. I do not have MS Office and it was a pain to look at the log.

But the fact that you were/are over-committing resources to your guest (resources that you do not have available) may result in funny situations. For example, your 8192 MB, is way, way too much and goes wasted. Your WinXP guest is a 32-bit one, and by definition it can only see about 3.5 GB (3584 MB). Anything more that that is stealing it from your host and it's going to make the problem worse. So lower the RAM to no more than 3.5 GB.

I believe that the number of CPUs to the guest is what made the whole thing work...

[Shashinka]

@ socratis

Thank you for your very clear answer.
I have just brought my guest RAM to 3584 MB (and 2 CPUs) : everything works fine !

I gather we may put this exchange of posts on hold at this stage.