[Solved] Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

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seantomas
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Aug 2018, 08:44

[Solved] Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by seantomas »

I am attempting to use VirtualBox for the first time and have been unable to get a VM to boot without receiving a critical error. I am runing VirtualBox 5.2.16 on Windows 7 SP1 as the host. I have VirtualBox installed on the OS drive and the VMs placed on another drive.

I have tried 2 guests - one is the pre-made VirtualBox Windows 10 Developer Evaluation VM downloaded from Microsoft and the other is simply trying to install Windows 10 from scratch. The Microsoft VM never displays anything. The from scratch attempt shows the Windows icon at the center of the screen, but then quickly throws the critical error.

The Vbox.log files from both are attached.

I have tried uninstalling, re-installing as admin, and reboots, but am unsure where to go from here and any help is appreciated!
Attachments
Logs.zip
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Last edited by socratis on 1. Aug 2018, 21:35, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Marked as [Solved].
mpack
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Primary OS: MS Windows 10
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Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by mpack »

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:06.885662 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
00:00:06.885663 !!
00:00:06.885663 !! VCPU0: Guru Meditation 1155 (VINF_EM_TRIPLE_FAULT)
00:00:06.885820 !!
00:00:06.885847 !! Skipping ring-0 registers and stack, rcErr=VINF_EM_TRIPLE_FAULT
00:00:06.885859 !!
00:00:06.885860 !! {mappings, <NULL>}
Triple fault means the guest did something nasty.

Did you modify the VM after creating it from the Win10 template? You seem to have the PAE/NX switch disabled, whereas AFAIK this is required for Win8.1 and Win10.
socratis
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Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by socratis »

  • Increase the CPUs to 2, you can afford it. Your VM is going to thank you.
  • Enable PAE. As mpack said that's a requirement.
  • Optionally (suggested) enable 2D/3D acceleration.
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seantomas
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Aug 2018, 08:44

Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by seantomas »

Thank you for the replies. I enabled PAE, increased CPUs to 2, and enabled 2D/3D acceleration and retried both VMs. Unfortunately they both still threw the same critical error when I attempted to run them. Logs attached with hardening logs also in case that is useful.

For reference, the Microsoft VM did come pre-configured with PAE disabled, and the default settings for the Win10 VM also had it disabled as that was not a setting I tried changing before.

Any other ideas?
Attachments
Eval Logs.zip
(78.15 KiB) Downloaded 10 times
Log and Hardening.zip
(77.96 KiB) Downloaded 8 times
seantomas
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Aug 2018, 08:44

Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by seantomas »

I managed to figure this out. There was a setting in my BIOS that needed to be enabled called "Execute Disable Bit". Once that was set, everything started working.

Thanks again for the help!
socratis
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Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by socratis »

seantomas
Glad you figured it out. Do you mind sending us a new log, one that's working? I'd like to compare the two and see if that shows up in the logs somewhere as a flag. Either of the VMs will do. TIA.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
seantomas
Posts: 4
Joined: 1. Aug 2018, 08:44

Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by seantomas »

Here is the log after it started working.
Attachments
VBox Succesful Boot.zip
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socratis
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Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by socratis »

Excellent! Thank you!


For those that read the tea leaves...

Working
00:00:03.006917 CPUM: SetGuestCpuIdFeature: Enabled NX
00:00:03.007324   NX - No-Execute/Execute-Disable = 1 (1)        <-- CPUID dump
Failing
00:00:02.790992 CPUM: WARNING! Can't turn on NX/XD when the host doesn't support it!
00:00:02.791272   NX - No-Execute/Execute-Disable = 0 (0)        <-- CPUID dump
The surprising thing (for me at least) was that I never realized that this was a requirement. Live and learn...
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
mpack
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Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
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Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by mpack »

I knew it was a requirement (I hit the same problem myself when trying to run the early Win10 betas on my old PC). However, I don't remember getting a guru meditation error before, I thought it was a more controlled error. However my memory may be faulty (it was a couple of years ago).

One thing missing from the discussion above: why was the the flag incorrectly set? If it was set to on (which AFAIK it is, if the correct template is used) when the hardware didn't support it then I'd have expected a more "friendly" error message. If it was set to off by the template when it's required by the selected guest then that would certainly be something to note.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: Critical Error on Guest OS Boot

Post by socratis »

The default for a new Win10 VM is for PAE/NX to be Off. Take a look at the very first posts, when the OP posted the logs of the default template. We told the OP to enable PAE/NX. So, it was Off at that point. Yet, the logs show the exact same error:
00:00:00.911557   EnablePAE         <integer> = 0x0000000000000000 (0)
...
00:00:01.549336 CPUM: WARNING! Can't turn on NX/XD when the host doesn't support it!
But, one thing that I've learned, and this came as a shock to me, is that ExecuteDisableBit=NX :shock: ! So, if you have that disabled in the BIOS, then you have no NX on your host OS, then your Win10 VM crashes, because it needs NX. Independently of the PAE/NX settings in the VM settings.

Follow the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execute_disable_bit link and you'll end up redirected in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit article.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
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