Sound cutting out on Windows XP guest

[toadstoolk1d]

I'm incredibly new to emulator software as well as these forums so I apologize in advance for my inexperience. If I did something wrong here, please let me know.

Host is a MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.6, guest is Windows XP professional 32 bit SP3. The only sound card that gives me any kind of result is ICH AC97. When I start the VM, it does the classic jingle on the welcome screen but cuts out halfway through it. Small sound effects on the desktop are fine, but when I run any of the games I've downloaded, those just make no sound at all. The games themselves (ISOs of the early 2000s I Spy games) run pretty much fine. I guess maybe the VM could be getting overwhelmed by the larger sound files, but I have no idea how to fix that. Or I could be wrong, which is also extremely likely.

I've been trying all day to find an answer here by myself, but as a person who literally just figured out how to use an emulator last night my efforts have been fruitless. If anybody here has any suggestions I would be eternally grateful.

[scottgus1]

Could possibly be an underprovisioned VM.

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

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. In the "Logs" subfolder, zip the VM's "vbox.log", and post the zip file, using the forum's Attachments tab. (Configure your host OS to show all extensions so you can find the "vbox.log", not "vbox.log.1", etc.)

[toadstoolk1d]

Got it, zip is attached. I just turned on the VM, booted up one of my games, closed the game, and powered off the VM.

[scottgus1]

Host is a MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.6

00:00:00.967994 VirtualBox VM 7.0.8 r156879 darwin.amd64 (Apr 17 2023 17:41:05) release log

I seem to remember from the forum Mac gurus that Virtualbox 7.0.8 does not run well on Catalina, maybe (?).

Additionally, 3D graphics support for XP stopped in Virtualbox 6.1. 6.0 still had 3D acceleration support for XP.

However, 6.0 is not officially supported on Catalina hosts. It may have worked, though.

After taking suitable backup copies of your host and VM folder, you could uninstall 7.0.8, reboot, then try to install 6.0.24:
https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/
If it installs, then try the VM. If the VM works, you can add Guest Additions with 3D support, start a new topic for this if you have questions.

If 6.0 does not install or the VM does not boot, try 6.1.something-later, but perhaps not 6.1.44 which has some new graphics and may not work well with XP. 6.1 does not have 3D acceleration but does have other Guest Additions capabilities that may help the XP VM to run easier.

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As for sound, the ICH97 sound card is the correct setting for XP VMs.

Bad sound comes from the OS being too busy on other things to keep the sound buffer filled. It's got too much to do or it doesn't have enough free time or capability to do what it has to do.

Host CPU status:
00:00:04.856520 CPUM: Physical host cores: 6
Guest CPU settings:
00:00:01.019387 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)

XP will run smoother with 2 processors. If this is a brand-new XP VM that you've not activated, you can start a new VM. If you have activated it, there is a trick using the "HALu" app to get XP to use two processors after the OS is installed, see viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24823&start=15#p111502 .

There's not much else I see that would make the VM not have good sound. Only one other thing you might want to do, just to use host RAM reasonably:

00:00:01.019393 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000160700000 (5 912 920 064, 5.5 GiB)

Typical 32-bit XP could only address 4GB RAM, maybe 3GB, and 2GB would have been a warehouse-load of RAM in XP days. Set the RAM slider back to 2 or 3GB. More RAM will then be available for the host.

[toadstoolk1d]

Thanks so much!! Changing to 6.0.24 fixed the sound problem. It unfortunately created a different problem, but for that I'll start a new topic like you asked.