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I, also, am seeing all my attempts at running a Windows 10 guest VM under Mint 20 crash during installation or very shortly thereafter. As I described under the forum topic VirtualBox 6.1.12 crashes with Win10 and Win8.1 out of a sudden I have tried quite a number of Win 10 releases along with several 6.0.x and 6.1.x versions of VirtualBox. I've seen a number of different crash error messages, but the latest one was SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION and the log file (attached under the above-mentioned forum topic) states:

GIM: HyperV: Guest indicates a fatal condition! P0=0x3b P1=0xc0000005, etc.

This is really upsetting since it means I can't run ANY Windows 10 system under VirtualBox. I hope that someone can diagnose the cause of this widespread failure!

Thanks, Wayne

Start the guest from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the guest from within the guest OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the guest with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the guest in the main Virtualbox window's guest list, choose Show Log. Save the far left tab's log, zip it, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.

I've attached the requested log file. This records the crash of a fresh Windows 10 release 1909 VM that managed to run for about 10 minutes after the installation completed. The crash, as usual, was listed as SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION. I really hope this log reveals the cause of all my Win 10 VMs crashing either during installation or after running for a very short time. Thanks very much for your help - I really appreciate it! Wayne

wbrells wrote:I really hope this log reveals the cause of all my Win 10 VMs crashing

It only reveals the information that you've already found, and it indicates a crash within the guest OS. You should investigate the cause as if the crash would happen on a physical PC.

I too see several reboots after booting from the CD ROM. One thing I do see, don't know if it's important:

00:00:11.776952 Ept - Extended Page Tables = 0 (1)

EPT is off in the guest.

Also try 2 processors in the guest, Windows 10 likes 2.

Finally:

00:00:11.510496 VirtualBox VM 6.1.10_Ubuntu r138449 linux.amd64 (Jun 6 2020 11:31:37) release log

You're running Ubuntu's fork. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads might help run things better.

I'm a bit confused as to which release of VirtualBox is recommended. Since Mint 20 is based on Ubuntu 20 (focal) isn't that the appropriate version to install? (There doesn't seem to be a Mint-specific version shown on the Download page for Linux hosts.) I should probably go back to using version 6.1.14 of VirtualBox. I was using 6.1.10 to see if that made any difference - it didn't seem to.

I ran Windows 10 release 2004 on the physical machine for some time. It never crashed, so I don't believe there is anything wrong with the system hardware or the ISO file used to install the VM. (As I mentioned, I've tried a number of ISO files and they all show the same crashing problem.)

I've tried using 2 CPUs and increasing the amount of RAM dedicated to the VM. Neither of those changes seemed to help.

The comment about Extended Page Tables (EPT) may be important. Is this a function of the hardware or is it something that can be specified when setting up the VM?

BTW a couple of recent crashes mentioned Ntfs. (I missed other details about this form of crash - sorry.)

Wayne

scottgus1 wrote:One thing I do see, don't know if it's important:

scottgus1 wrote:00:00:11.776952 Ept - Extended Page Tables = 0 (1)

EPT is off in the guest.

This is correct (compare it with your own VMs ). Without nested virtualization, VirtualBox running inside the host OS provides the necessary functionality to the guest itself. FWIW, even with nested virtualization you get the identical log message.

wbrells wrote:I'm a bit confused as to which release of VirtualBox is recommended. Since Mint 20 is based on Ubuntu 20 (focal) isn't that the appropriate version to install? (There doesn't seem to be a Mint-specific version shown on the Download page for Linux hosts.)

Yes, you should use the VirtualBox 6.1.14 Ubuntu 19.10 / 20.04 version from the Download page. BTW, it doesn't matter that the file name contains eoan, and you get the same version if you replace eoan with focal.

wbrells wrote:The comment about Extended Page Tables (EPT) may be important. Is this a function of the hardware or is it something that can be specified when setting up the VM?

It's automatically specified correctly. You'll find it under Settings > System > Acceleration > Enable Nested Paging.

Folks, I've attached the latest crash log that reflects Windows 10 version 2004 running as a VM under VirtualBox 6.1.14. For this test I increased the amount of RAM for the VM to 4GB and allocated 2 CPUs. Otherwise, I left the settings unchanged. The error code, once again, appears to be 0x3.

I assume that VirtualBox is running fine with Windows 10 under Mint 20 for many users, so I'm perplexed as to why I'm not able to do so...

Any additional suggestions would be greatly appreciated! - Wayne

wbrells wrote:I assume that VirtualBox is running fine with Windows 10 under Mint 20 for many users

Yes, this combination is running fine for me, and I'd expect to see many more reports about your problem if it was widespread.

Although the guest OS is crashing (and my suggestion to research it as if it was a physical PC still holds true), I could imagine the graphics driver on the host playing a role. Start the VM in headless mode, and see if the crash still happens.

Additionally, for a test, strip the VM from all virtual hardware that is not needed while testing (audio, network, etc.), and see if the issue persists.

==> CAUSE OF PROBLEM MAY BE THE WIFI ADAPTER!

Thanks for suggesting that I "strip down" the VM to see what may be causing it to crash so frequently.

As a test, I turned off WiFi in the host Mint 20 system and substituted an Ethernet connection. After doing this, I have not had a crash. I "exercised" the network connection by downloading a number of large Windows update files and did not see any problems. This result got me looking at the WiFi adapter in more detail. From Mint's Driver Manager I obtained the attached report which claims that the Broadcom BCM4313 adapter in not working! That seems very odd since I've accessing the internet from Mint without any problems for quite some time.

Can one of you kind people suggest how I might get the Broadcom adapter working better under VirtualBox (or should I go for a different adapter altogether)?

Wayne

Looking good so far! Using the command: sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms

Got rid of the error message concerning the Broadcom BCM4313 WiFi adapter.

My Windows VM now seems very stable - not one crash.

Not directly related to the above, but using a Windows 10 VM showed up another problem:

VirtualBox's so-called Seamless Mode apparently does not work with a Windows 10 guest, and from what I've read online it doesn't appear that this feature has worked for the last several years! Currently, giving the command to enter Seamless Mode just makes Windows go full screen. A big disappointment, since Seamless Mode is the main reason I switched from VMWare to VirtualBox!

Thanks again for everyone's help - Wayne