I have a 64 bit Windows 8.1 host machine and the two virtual machines are running Windows 10 guests.
The error shown in the first pop-up dialog box that appears is: 5 VERR_INVALID_NAME (-104) – Invalid (malformed) file/path name.
Only a single error appears in the VBoxHardening log (attached):
Wintab32.dll does not exist in the C:\Windows\System32 directory (yes, hidden and system files are both displayed in my Windows explorer). In addition, I did a full registry search for "wintab" and "wintab32" and there were no hits. It appears the error is occurring because VirtualBox is trying to load wintab32.dll and the file does not exist.2bd0.2a80: supR3HardenedMonitor_LdrLoadDll: error opening 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\wintab32.dll': 0 (NtPath=\??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\wintab32.dll; Input=C:\WINDOWS\system32\wintab32.dll; rcNtGetDll=0x0
2bd0.2a80: supR3HardenedMonitor_LdrLoadDll: returns rcNt=0xc0000034 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\wintab32.dll'
I read the posting "Diagnosing VirtualBox Hardening Issues" and ran through the checks listed there, retesting VirtualBox after each:
- Verified that the last line in the hardening log shows ExitCode = 0x1.
Fully uninstalled and reinstalled latest version (5.2.12) of VBox using "Run as administrator" to run the installer.
Made sure latest Windows updates are installed on my host.
Ran "DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth", followed by "sfc /scannow", which reported "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."
Disabled my antivirus software (ESET Smart Security) and tested.
Fully uninstalled ESET and started Windows Firewall and Windows Defender in its place.
Verified that Hyper-V is not enabled.
"More than one thread in process" does not appear in the hardening log.
Created a new empty virtual machine and started it – the same error occurred as it tried to load wintab32.dll. Thus it appears it has nothing to do with the contents of the virtual machine.
Just to see what would happen, I downloaded a digitizing pen tablet driver from a trusted vendor of such software (Wacom) and transferred the wintab32.dll to the Windows\System32 directory. This time the error did not occur on the attempt to open the file, but a different one occurred once it had it open:
- "Image is for 'X86_32' and contains code (0x15a200), only accepting images for 'AMD64' with code."
Would appreciate any advice.
Regards