Windows 10 Guest "hanging" on ubuntu 20.04

[LEW]

I am having my Windows 10 guest begin "hanging" (becoming non-responsive) frequently for the last month or so. The display remains visible, but no mouse or keyboard input gets received. It appears to be somewhat dependent upon how heavily I am using the system. it can do this within a few minutes of initiating the VM to several days.

Not sure how to diagnose the cause, so I have just continued to reboot it when it occurs. However, that is a pain and I have now noticed issues with the Windows Explorer's "Quick access" pins disappearing, probably due to the hard reboots.

here is the bottom of the log file, if that is helpful:

25:49:21.836680 AsyncCompletion: Task 0x007fbafc446f80 completed after 10 seconds
25:52:14.722550 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
25:52:14.725545 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
26:07:40.202473 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
26:07:40.205043 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
26:09:06.176447 GUI: Request to close active machine-window.
26:09:06.225840 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'SUSPENDING'
26:09:06.232642 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file '/opt/VirtualBox_VMs/Windows 10 (new)/Windows 10 (new).vdi' (flags 000c0781) created successfully
26:09:06.245199 PDMR3Suspend: 18 359 845 ns run time
26:09:06.245222 Changing the VM state from 'SUSPENDING' to 'SUSPENDED'
26:09:06.245306 Console: Machine state changed to 'Paused'
26:09:19.351645 Changing the VM state from 'SUSPENDED' to 'RESUMING'
26:09:19.352035 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file '/opt/VirtualBox_VMs/Windows 10 (new)/Windows 10 (new).vdi' (flags 000c0723) created successfully
26:09:19.352965 Changing the VM state from 'RESUMING' to 'RUNNING'
26:09:19.352985 Console: Machine state changed to 'Running'
26:09:30.792589 VMMDev: vmmDevHeartbeatFlatlinedTimer: Guest seems to be unresponsive. Last heartbeat received 4 seconds ago

Let me know if you have ideas on what to look for and/or if I should provide any additional info, etc.

[scottgus1]

Is your previous topic cleared up? viewtopic.php?p=538906#p538906

[LEW]

scottgus1: Yes, that other issue has been resolved. I don't remember now how it got "fixed" but I have not had any issues with multiple monitors lately. I think more recent versions of VirtualBox has apparently resolved that issue.

Here is a quick recap of this problem:
1. I open up VirtualBox (version 7.0.12) with two windows displayed. the host system is running Ubuntu 20.04 and the guest is running Windows 10. I have an HP laptop "ZBook 15 G5" with 32G of RAM and a 4k resolution screen.
2. I have allocated 16G of RAM to the VirtualBox image and 6 processors (out of 12?).
3. I often save and restore the state of this VirtualBox image when I move back and forth from my home and my work offices. Note that I have not seen any correlation between this usage behavior and the "hanging" issue.
4. I have two 4k resolution TV monitors at both locations that these two VirtualBox windows are normally displayed on. At work, I do have an additional smaller monitor, but I use it to access the host system where the fonts are larger than what the laptop's 4k screen provides by default.
5. When the VirtualBox image "hangs", it usually occurs when I am trying to switch focus to another app. Often, I will end up with an active mouse cursor that will still move on the VirtualBox windows with an hourglass connected with the cursor. However, I cannot get any response to the mouse buttons (clicking them has no visible effect) nor can do I get any visible response from the keyboard anymore in the VirtualBox windows.
6. When this occurs, the keyboard and mouse are apparently unaffected when controlled by the host operating system (mouse cursor has been moved outside the VirtualBox windows). Note that I do still have access to the VirtualBox windows' menus as well as resize, go fullscreen and minimize the VirtualBox screens even after it "hangs".
7. Once in this "hung" state, I have never been able to cleanly recover. So, I must resort to rebooting the VirtualBox image.
8. The time to "hang" seems somewhat random. However, if I am using the Windows 10 system heavier, it appears to reduce the time between reboots. For example, if I am only using one app (e.g. miktex, NetBeans, etc.) it may take up to 3 or 4 days before it "hangs". If I am using multiple such applications with lots of additional browser windows open, etc. I may have it "hang" before the end of the day. However, that correlation is not strong as I have rebooted the VirtualBox image and used it lightly for only a couple of hours and it has "hung" up at times too.
8. I have included my most current copy of the log file as a zipped attachment.

[LEW]

My Windows 10 guest hung again this morning.
I had started the VM up on Monday morning but did not do much except reading email (Outlook) and browsing to various websites, etc. during the day. I then "Saved the machine state" Tuesday morning and took the laptop to work. I worked all morning just revising text using TexMaker. I took a short break (10-15 minutes) and came back with the VM hung up again with no mouse or keyboard input as mentioned previously. I've included the log file.

Note that after zipping the log file (Vbox_02-13-2024.log.zip), and creating this message, the log file has updated with the following lines being appended:

02:25:57.455391 GUI: Request to close active machine-window.
02:25:57.474632 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'SUSPENDING'
02:25:57.479084 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file '/opt/VirtualBox_VMs/Windows 10 (new)/Snapshots/{b1e178f9-846c-40d8-9701-5cb18a83e92b}.vdi' (flags 000c0781) created successfully
02:25:57.482310 PDMR3Suspend: 7 250 712 ns run time
02:25:57.482391 Changing the VM state from 'SUSPENDING' to 'SUSPENDED'
02:25:57.482441 Console: Machine state changed to 'Paused'
02:26:01.027819 Changing the VM state from 'SUSPENDED' to 'RESUMING'
02:26:01.028499 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file '/opt/VirtualBox_VMs/Windows 10 (new)/Snapshots/{b1e178f9-846c-40d8-9701-5cb18a83e92b}.vdi' (flags 000c0723) created successfully
02:26:01.030819 Changing the VM state from 'RESUMING' to 'RUNNING'
02:26:01.030951 Console: Machine state changed to 'Running'

[LEW]

Apparently I didn't include the zipped file mentioned in the previous comment successfully. Here it is.

VBox_02-13-2024.log.zip

(21.51 KiB) Downloaded 44 times

[scottgus1]

I'm not certain what to do with this one yet. We'll need a forum guru to come along.

[fth0]

Your description reminds me of a 7-year-old issue that hasn't been fixed yet AFAIK. In that issue, some mouse handling by the user could lead to VirtualBox creating an invisible X11 window overlaying parts of the virtual display of a Linux guest. In consequence, mouse and keyboard events were (not) handled by the overlay window and never reached the visible underlying application windows. One of the workarounds was to restart the VBoxClient processes inside the VM.

Your situation is different, since you have a Linux host and a Windows guest. But perhaps you can analyze with xwininfo (or other X11 tools), if the Linux host OS created an invisible X11 window overlaying the VM's windows ...

Alternatively, you could try if switching a VM window from/to full-screen serves as a workaround, because that reinitializes the virtual mouse coordinates.

[LEW]

ftho, I'll explore that avenue. I would not have guessed that this could possibly be the cause of my issue. THX