[SIGNING TROUBLE] Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 guest additions are broken.

[frg]

I tried to install the addtions from Beta 1 and beta 2 and they will not install. 3 different host systems, x86 and x64 Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 x64 guests are affected. Can provide a vbox.log if needed but it is 100% reproducible on any system I tried it on.

Seems 7.0.18 and 7.0.20 are also affected so might be an older error which crept into the beta. Maybe certs again. Windows 7 guests are ok this time.

7.0.16 guest addtions work for now.

FRG

[pentagonik]

Can you elaborate in which way they are "broken"? Do they install, or are the integrations on the guest simply broken? Any other hints in VBox.log?

[frg]

The addtiions seem to install but upon reboot no drivers are installed. If I try to manually install the driver I get an error message. 7.0.16 additions are ok and can be used as a workaround for now it seems. See logs and screenshot attached.

FRG

[pentagonik]

The guest logs shows an error 0xE0000247 when installing the Guest Additions driver, so it looks like driver signing trouble. Can you try booting the VMs with driver signing enforcement disabled (Google knows) and try again?

[birdie]

I cannot confirm that.

The guest additions install just fine here.

Using Windows 8.1 en_windows_8.1_with_update_x64_dvd_6051480.iso (the latest released version).

[birdie]

A little bit offtopic, Windows 8.1 64 was quite frugal: check the RAM use after idling for a while. All the updates (over 80) except MS Edge have been installed.

Windows 11 64 on the other hand? At the very least 2GB. On my PC with an NVIDIA GPU it's 3GB with zero third-party applications running.

[frg]

With driver signing enforcement disabled the beta 2 drivers install with a warning message that the publisher can not be verified. Why it works for Birdie don't know. I have a few test vms where this happens.

[birdie]

With driver signing enforcement disabled the beta 2 drivers install with a warning message that the publisher can not be verified. Why it works for Birdie don't know. I have a few test vms where this happens.

Are your VMs fully updated? AFAIK Windows 7/8 needed some updates to properly work with drivers signed with SHA256.

I might be totally wrong though.

Anyways I'm 99.99% sure something is up with your systems. I used the vanilla Windows 8.1 installation image and everything just worked. I did not change a thing in Windows to install the drivers. You can test it youself, the ISO image I mentioned earlier can be freely downloaded from archive.org. I won't post a serial key but it can be trivially googled.

[frg]

vms are fully updated. The cert chain looks totally different in 7.0.16. The signing kludge cert shows up among other things. The later verions use new certs and these seem to cause it. If you installed the drivers immediately after setting up 8.1 maybe uninstall them make sure sha256 support is there nd then try again. I suspect some problem in the sha256 chain only. Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 vms are fine.

FRG

[birdie]

vms are fully updated. The cert chain looks totally different in 7.0.16. The signing kludge cert shows up among other things. The later verions use new certs and these seem to cause it. If you installed the drivers immediately after setting up 8.1 maybe uninstall them make sure sha256 support is there nd then try again. I suspect some problem in the sha256 chain only. Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 vms are fine.

FRG

You are indeed correct.

After installing all the updates for 8.1, the guest additions fail to install.

[frg]

Good that it can be reproduced. Suspect not many will care about 8.1 but Server 2012 R2 is still supported with ESU updates so might affect these users.

[frg]

Not fixed in GA.