The instruction at 0x... referenced memory at 0x... The memory could not be read

[christ2]

Great product, reliable for many years, unfortunately I have today been getting the following error:

VirtualBox.exe - Application Error => The instruction at 0xb45f6733 referenced memory at 0x00000018.The memory could not be read.

Upon confirming the error(OK button) displayed on the Host the guest VM goes to being "Aborted". Note it seems to occur randomly doesn't seem to be easy to force the error. I did upgrade to the latest version VBox VirtualBox-5.1.26-117224-Win.exe in an attempt to resolve the issue, but alas the problem persisted. If you require additional info please let me know. Any help really appreciated.

Host = Win8.1
Guest=WinXP SP3(32Bit)

[mpack]

Does it start if you disable audio in the VM settings?

[JohnB54]

I had this same issue on two (vastly different hardware) Windows 7 host computers that I updated from V5.1.24 to V5.1.26. Both systems gave me an illegal read reference to location 0x18 while starting Windows XP SP3 guest systems.

I was able to resolve the issue by rolling back Virtual Box host to V5.1.24. I was unable to start any guest environments properly under V5.1.26.

I haven't gotten back to troubleshoot the problem yet, but it was an extremely reliable failure that survived 7 or 8 boot attempts.

[skitten]

Been hitting this too but it's intermittent (Fedora 26 guest). Sometimes after a reboot it just starts working again.

[michaln]

Probably the same as viewtopic.php?p=398892 (see solution offered in that thread).

[christ2]

Does it start if you disable audio in the VM settings?

Thanks for your reply, the VM can boot and works fine for a seemingly random period of time and then the error occurs the last crash, 5 minutes ago, log extract:

45:58:24.178835 Changing the VM state from 'RESUMING' to 'RUNNING'
45:58:24.178869 Console: Machine state changed to 'Running'
45:58:29.179418 PCNet#3: The link is back up again after the restore.

, 45hours(I believe) without throwing the error. I have now disabled the audio in Machine Settings. I will test the VM stability and return to you.

[Castle]

I also had this same issue when I updated from V5.1.24 to V5.1.26. While starting Windows XP SP3 guest systems that had been working for years.
I disabled the audio and now it does not crash.

[socratis]

Or you can try the test builds, they contain the fix: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds