The virtual machine is called 'Mark'sWindowsXPOS' & VBox says it has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1). More details may be available in 'C:\Users\mulli\VirtualBox VMs\Mark'sWindowsXPOS\Logs\VBoxHardening.log'.
Result Code:
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
I’ve already tried restarting;
I removed all the McAfee sofware;
I disabled as much Windows security stuff as I thought I could & it didn’t help.
I installed Norton 360 (I just don't really want to leave the system vulnerable for long), tried a VB VM & it didn’t work. Disabled all the N360 security & restarted, that didn’t work.
Re-enabled N360 & restarted system, VBVM not work. Though actually, I think my disabling of N360 may have been for 4 hours, so it might still be disabled.
I read a number of posts, but concluded with this one :
I have Win10 Home, so I think Hyper-v is not an issue (web says Hyper-v is not in Win10Home);Re: Diagnosing VirtualBox Hardening Issues
by mpack » 2017 0315 06:40
Other things to try:
• Disable your real-time antivirus, at least temporarily, to test whether this is conflicting with VirtualBox. On Windows 10 hosts the Windows Defender AV is designed by people who know how to write low level code for Windows without fighting it or breaking it. It does not conflict with VirtualBox. You would perhaps be wise to stick to that.
• Expanding on the previous point, some antivirus don't provide an effective "disable" function. To be absolutely sure it won't interfere you have to uninstall it completely and perform a full reboot of your host PC.
• Make sure Hyper-v is disabled. Modern VirtualBox VMs usually can't run if Hyper-v is hogging the hardware resources required for virtualization. This may present itself first as a hardening error, so it's worth checking.
• Power down your VM (not suspended state) and restart.
• Fully power down and then restart your host. Sometimes this shakes something loose.
• Fully uninstall and then reinstall VirtualBox using "Run as administrator" to run the installer. Sometimes this replaces a corrupted DLL that was causing a problem, or changes the order that Windows calls on device drivers.
[END OF "Re: Diagnosing VirtualBox Hardening Issues" POST]
I do seem to have “adversaries” entries in the "VBoxHardening" log & found “Anti-Malware Core.” entries, but don’t know what to do about the former & can’t seem to find & remove the latter. I don’t find that Windows 10 Home is running any “Anti-Malware” stuff right now; maybe because I turned off Win10 stuff. I'm quite sure I saw some appearances of the word "Symantec" in a log once, but don't find it in the current log. Maybe it's gone because I disabled Norton 360 as one of my efforts. Actually, I've verified Norton 360 Advanced Security Settings are back on & I made a copy of the log as "2018 1205 175159 - VBoxHardening.txt" & will attach it.
I can't find settings in Symantec's Norton 360 to make an exception (temporary or permanent) for VBox specifically - either on this W10 or my other W7Pro system, but turning off all the security I could didn't seem to help. I think I tried the VM w/o any Windows 10 & w/o any McAffee running (before installing Norton 360), but I didn't preserve a VBox log each time, just saw that the error msg appeared identical each time.