Hardening error during startup

[SimonChung]

Hi,

All of a sudden, my VirtualBox is not working for my Debian guest OS. It was working yesterday but today it failed with what looks like the dreaded hardening error.

Code: Select all

Result Code: 
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: 
MachineWrap
Interface: 
IMachine {85cd948e-a71f-4289-281e-0ca7ad48cd89}

I've attached the VBoxHardening log. I suspect it might be caused by the Cylance anti-virus but I cannot disable it as it is controlled by my IT department.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest VirtualBox. Can someone suggest what might be the cause?

thank you,
Simon

[mpack]

Did you read the FAQ? FAQ: Diagnosing VirtualBox Hardening Issues.

Cylance Protect is certainly a well known trouble maker, and that fact is not negated by your inability to remove it. But, you can discuss that with your IT people. At the very least you should have IT temporarily remove it to verify if it is the source of this conflict.

However, your actual error doesn't strike me as a Cylance Protect problem, you are getting a memory access error (0xC0000005), which usually means that an unsigned DLL got booted out (the FAQ explains the reasoning). On the other hand your log is very short, which does often indicate something fundamental (like AV, because it has its tendrils into everything).

[SimonChung]

Yes, thanks for the reply. I had read the FAQ before posting. I'm not sure if it is a DLL issue as it had been working the day before. I need to try and get IT to disable Cylance Protect to narrow down the cause.

thanks again,
Simon

[mpack]

Just bear in mind that AV suites are not always really disabled by their "disable" option. Basically, if you can still find mention of Cylance in the hardening log after it has been "disabled" then it isn't really disabled at all, and so the experiment may not make the difference we hope. I would uninstall Cylance, then reboot the host PC, then run VirtualBox - and if you still have a problem then look at the hardening log to see if something of Cylance is still there.