Ghost icon in Dock prevents OSX shut down

[bteags]

I see that this issue may have occurred in the past, so maybe it is the same bug showing up again. (Ticket #12999 & #12930)

Anyway, after installing 5.0 and now 5.1, whenever I launch Vbox and then launch Win 10 Pro, 2 new icons appear in the dock. One I expect, as that is the Win 10 running. The other is another instance of Vbox.

When I shut down Win 10 Pro, that icon goes away as expected, but the 2nd icon for Vbox remains.

If I close (quit) Vbox, the 2nd icon remains and is showing as running (the little dot). This icon indicates the app is not responding and no amount of 'force quit' will make it stop. This prevents the OS from shutting down and the only way to shut the system down is to hold down the start button.

I have looked at what threads are running and I can see no VirtualBox, so I am not sure where this is hanging up.

Any ideas?

FYI - I am running Mac OS X 10.11.6 on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro 17"

[socratis]

With VirtualBox closed, not just from what you see, but making sure from the Activity Monitor there is no process starting with Virtual* or VB*, right-click on the Dock icon and select "Show in Finder". What's the location of VirtualBox? Full path please.

Now launch it. Again repeat the right-click on the Dock and select "Show in Finder", on the NEW icon. What's the location of the new icon? Full path please.

[bteags]

Sorry for the delay in my response.

There are no processes in Activity Monitor starting with Virtual* or VB*. Here is the path: <HD>Applications>VirtualBox>Contents>Resources>VirtualBoxVM. (If I dbl-click on this, I get the message "The application "VirtualBoxVM" is not open anymore"

After launching Virtual Box, here is the path: <HD>Applications.VirtualBox. (The 2nd icon is still present. Launching a session opens 2 more icons, 1 for the session and another Virtual Box icon that bounces along until the session is up and running - normal I assume).

[bteags]

Maybe this is a clue? (!!!)

I normally shut down the session as you would shut down the operating system (In the session Win 10 Start > Power > Shut Down)

Today I decided to quit the session by right-clicking on the session icon and then selecting quit. Choosing "Power off..." from the drop down in the session, the session closes normally. Then I closed the instance of Virtual Box and all the icons disappear as expected. I have performed this twice with the same results.

Could I have been quitting the session the wrong way?

Sadly, performing a restart or shutdown of OSX still hangs once I run a session in Virtual Box...

[socratis]

I just re-read the thread from the beginning and I think I may have misunderstood something, so I'll ask you to clarify it.

Do you have a "permanent" (keep-in-dock) icon in the Dock for VirtualBox? And then you get a second one as soon as you launch the VM? Does the second one contains the menu "Dock icon" with the options "Show Application Icon", "Show Monitor Preview" and "Enable/Disable Dock Icon Overlay"? That icon would be the instance of the VM. The other icon is the VirtualBox Manager.

You could get this behavior if:
a) You don't have a permanent icon in the Dock for VirtualBox, and
b) You have created a shortcut for your VM, or you start the VM at login.

Is that the case?

[bteags]

I just re-read the thread from the beginning and I think I may have misunderstood something, so I'll ask you to clarify it.

Do you have a "permanent" (keep-in-dock) icon in the Dock for VirtualBox? And then you get a second one as soon as you launch the VM? Does the second one contains the menu "Dock icon" with the options "Show Application Icon", "Show Monitor Preview" and "Enable/Disable Dock Icon Overlay"? That icon would be the instance of the VM. The other icon is the VirtualBox Manager.

You could get this behavior if:
a) You don't have a permanent icon in the Dock for VirtualBox, and
b) You have created a shortcut for your VM, or you start the VM at login.

Is that the case?

OK - I had a little time to test a few scenarios so here goes:

Yes, there is a permanent icon in the Dock. No, the 2nd icon does not have "Show Application Icon" etc, (see below).

Here is what I get -

After a fresh shut down and start - 1 permanent icon in the dock.

- Launch Vbox from permanent icon - 1 new session icon and 1 vBox icon that bounces until the session OS is fully loaded. The session icon has lots of options. The 'bouncy' icon has "Application Not Responding" at the top. Total of 3 icons.
- Close session by quitting the session icon and then close VBox - the 2 new icons disappear.

-- Relaunch VBox and start session - again 1 new session icon and the 'bouncy' VBox icon are created.
-- Close session by using Start | Power | Shut down in Windows 10 (the session). Close VBox and the permanent icon and the 'bouncy' icon are in the Dock. Cannot get rid of 'Mr Bouncy' using force quit and no instances of Virtual* or VBox* are visible in the Activity Monitor.
-- Shut down procedure 'hangs' (freezes) with just the Dock and background image visible. Press and hold start button to shut down.

So, I am curious as to whether I might be doing something wrong, or if I stumbled over a bug that hopefully can be fixed in the future.

THANKS!!

[socratis]

That's a tough one to figure out what's going on, but here's a potential strategy. We'll try the scenario where the failure occurs:

• Open up Terminal. Record the output of:

  • sudo ps -Aj > ps1.txt

• Reach the state where you've quit your VM, but you've got the app icon and Mr. Bouncy.
• Again at the terminal, record the output of:

  • sudo ps -Aj > ps2.txt

Post the outputs, ps1.txt and ps2.txt, so we can compare them.

[bteags]

Here are the 2 files...

After doing a little more poking around, I found an errant plugin from Avid (ProTools) that is not supposed to be installed on El Capitan. I removed it and reset SMC and NVRAM. So far, restart and shutdown are operating OK after running VBox. (The extra icon goes away as expected). I am thinking that somehow the /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/HAL/Avid CoreAudio.plugin was getting in the way of VBox.

I'll run for a while and report back.

[socratis]

I'll run for a while and report back.

OK, great. In the meantime, here are some of the non-standard apps/daemons running on your system. Not bad:

• /Applications/ClamXav.app
  /Applications/Dropbox.app
  /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/CoreSync/Core Sync.app
  /Library/Application Support/Adobe/AdobeGCClient/AdobeGCClient.app
  /Library/Application Support/Avid/Cloud Client Services/AssetCacheService
  /Library/Application Support/Native Instruments/Hardware/NIHardwareAgent.app
  /Library/Application Support/RolandDrv/RDUSB012F/RDUSB012FSetupd
  /Library/DropboxHelperTools/Dropbox_u501/dbfseventsd
  /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/licenseDaemon.app/Contents/MacOS/licenseDaemon --backurl https://activation.paceap.com/InitiateActivation

Oh, and when you post with the update status, please post the output of the command:

• kextstat | grep -v com.apple

[socratis]

BTW, keep in mind another thread with a similar problem: Phantom VM After Quitting VB.

[THirsch]

Hi,
I had this additional bouncing icon as well and was not able to start additional VMs once I closed the main VBox window.

After analyzing with 'sudo ps -Aj' in the different states, I tackled this down to be related to an install of "ManyCam for MAC"
As soon, as I uninstalled that app from my mac, VBox operation went back to normal - yeah!!

The offending process seemed to be:
Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/ManyCamVideoDeviceCMIO.plugin/Contents/Resources/ManyCamVideoDeviceDaemon

I mailed ManyCam support about this fact as well and thought this info might help others in 'getting back to normal' with VBox as well.
Not sure, if anyone from virtualbox will jump in an give this a try for possibly fixing it in next VBox release (if it can be done by VBox - otherwise I have to wait for a fix from ManyCam).

[socratis]

The question is why? What does ManyCam do that makes this happen?
In any event, thanks for sharing!