Windows XP Guest Freezes on "Welcome" screen

[flimsy]

I'm trying to get a Windows XP guest running in VirtualBox in order to test some old hardware. After several failed attempts with ISOs that resulted in BSOD errors, I managed to find an iso here: github/lucianoferrari/winxpimage that would boot. Although this image will boot, it inevitably hangs at the "welcome" screen before the XP desktop loads (though I did once have it load to desktop and then hang). I've kept the basic configuration of the iso intact, since chances to anything other than the amount of memory of number of CPUs seems to result in a BSOD. I have increased CPU and memory to no avail, though it does seem like the VM is doing _something_ during these hangs, as I can see CPU usage is at 16% guest/80% host, with ~40k VM exits/sec. I've let the screen sit for a few hours as well to see if anything would change, but no dice.

I've also tried downgrading to VirtualBox 6 from 7, since I recall this being a pretty smooth process a few years back. Not sure why its become so much more unstable with time.

The only other thread on here that mentions anything along these lines was a guy who just allocated more RAM and CPU cores, but that didn't do anything for me. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[multiOS]

Please provide a 'zipped' copy of the VBox.log file for the failed run. If you don't know where the log is stored the right-click on the VM entry in the VirtualBox Manager window and select the option to "Show in [your file manager]"

[Tax Shack]

Flimsy, what host OS are you using? I have Win 11 and I used to crank my VBox 6.1 XP machines just fine. I suspect something in a Win 11 update has caused my XP VM's to hang as well. Actually, various scenarios such as blue screen of death, booting XP all the way until all the icons appear then hanging and booting and hanging before any icons are displayed. When hanging, it seems there is absolutely no disk or net i/o.

Thank god my Win 10 VM still runs ok; I have very important work software on there.

[Stickybit]

You need to disable Virtualization Based Security - on the host computer. Then XP will run just fine.

[Tax Shack]

Well, turning off Core Isolation (Memory Integrity) on my host Win11 certainly did the trick; the XP VM booted almost instantaneously.

But, can something be done to VBox XP VM to get around this "fix"? Integrity of memory should be paramount. I have attached the log from my session that hung.

DELLWINXP-Oracle-2024-05-08-09-46-47.zip

(28.71 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[multiOS]

There are no 'work-arounds' only user choice on whether or not to use 3rd-Party software which needs access to VT-X/AMD-V to perform efficiently if you experience these extreme slow down. - Disabling Hyper-V, if present, and/or built-in Microsoft security features is itself the 'work-around' for that poor performance until a software solution can be developed.

See the VirtualBox User Manual Section 15.2 'Known Issues' for a brief overview.