virtualbox.org

OK, here is an update. I could get the virtual machine to run in the older version of VirtualBox, but I never could get the printer to work. The print spooler in WinXP would crash instantly every time and I got frustrated trying to reinstall a modern HP Network printer on an old OS on a virtual machine.

Today, I updated to 6.1.34r and the first time I tried to start the Virtual XP machine, I got an entirely different error that I didn't write down. It gave me the option to ignore. I hit ignore about three times and was into my virtual machine, but it seemed locked up. It wouldn't accept a click or any input. I closed the virtual and told it to power down. When I started it the second time, it fired right up like it used to. The printer works fine to my network printer.

This entire thing is very strange. I haven't changed any bios settings or windows settings since the problems that I posted above. The only change I know of was downgrading to an old version, then upgrading to the newest version of VirtualBox.

Having mixed emotions about this. I was desperately needing VirtualBox to run an old version of VersaCheck. When that didn't work, I spent half a day building my own templates, and figuring out how to print my checks with InDesign using datamerge, so I don't even need VersaCheck anymore.

kirkdickinson wrote: This entire thing is very strange.

In fact it sounds like standard XP behavour when a bad driver or service is present. After the driver/service hangs on boot one time too many, XP will disable it. This is one of the features that made XP far more reliable than Win98: that it remembers and can automatically kick out troublesome third party drivers.

I would imagine that modern Windows retains this feature, but it isn't a novelty any more so it rarely gets mentioned.

The XP event log might indicate what got eliminated, but if you haven't noticed what got lost then you probably don't need it.