Vista fails to run on version 5.2.12

[srcLurker]

Hello --

I have virtualbox version 5.2.12 running on a linux mint machine (version 12.3, based on ubuntu xenial). I have a Vista virtual machine which I have been using for awhile, but after a recent upgrade, the virtual machine starts up, shows vista starting to load and then exits back to the virtualbox GUI screen (no error message, no core dump - even with a "ulimt -c unlimited").

The Vbox.log is available at pastebin under SukhyxuQ. (I would post this information as a U R L but it seems I am not yet allowed to put U R L s into a post in this forum).

I don't see any obvious errors or warnings in the VBox.log file, but it's possible they are there and I don't recognize them as such. The problem is very reproducible. I'm happy to provide more information, but not sure what else would be useful.

Thank you.

-- charles

Some additional information which may be useful:

$ uname -a
Linux crsarah 4.10.0-40-generic #44~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 9 15:37:44 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.3
DISTRIB_CODENAME=sylvia
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia"

$ virtualbox --help
Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager 5.2.12
...

$ vboxmanage -v
5.2.12r122591

$ vboxmanage list extpacks
Extension Packs: 1
Pack no. 0: Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack
Version: 5.2.12
Revision: 122591
Edition:
Description: USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Host Controller, Host Webcam, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM, Disk Encryption, NVMe.
VRDE Module: VBoxVRDP
Usable: true
Why unusable:

$ wc VBox.log
1164 6760 72250 VBox.log

[andyp73]

People generally won't go looking for logs on external sites but as the sun is shining I went and had a quick look...

The only obvious thing that I can see is that the Guest Additions are the very old 4.3.36 version. Will Vista boot into safe-mode (bash <F8> repeatedly at startup to get the Windows boot menu) to allow you to uninstall the old version? If it does, uninstall the old GA, reboot and see if you can install the 5.2.12 version and see if that works.

If not, a full VBox.log file (zipped of course).

-Andy.

[mpack]

FYI, "the virtual machine starts up, shows vista starting to load and then exits back to the virtualbox GUI screen" contains an implicit incorrect assumption of some kind of process hierarchy. It doesn't work like that: the VM is spawned as an independant process, so the GUI is finished with the VM as soon as it begins to run. In particular the GUI does not wait on the process to see if it returns an error code. So an accurate rewording of what you said would be, the "VM starts and then immediately shuts down again without an error message".

Next, please attach logs locally, after zipping them. Also the provided log was truncated before the important part (i.e. the part that might have logged the reason for ending the session), so is pretty useless. PLEASE MAKE SURE A SESSION HAS ENDED BEFORE GRABBING THE LOG OF THAT SESSION.

That all said, and based solely on the description of the problem given (almost identical to one from just the other day), I'm going to guess that the Vista activation grace period has expired, and the VM is therefore closing itself. That would be why there is no VM error, because there isn't one.

An un-truncated log would provide certainty, in which case please provide a complete VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in the GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip file. Attach the zip here directly (not a URL to offsite hosting).

[mpack]

If the VM is really aborting (an extremely rare thing), then have you tried simply reinstalling VirtualBox? If "after an upgrade" means after a host kernel upgrade then this would be recommended.