Frozen W7 guest VM screens when (upgrad/install)ing guest additions CD image in my old 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 VM...

[ant]

Hello,

I'm still having problems (install/upgrad)ing VirtualBox's guest Additions CD Images in my old 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 VM in my updated 64-bit W10 Pro. PC host. Upgrading guest Additions CD Images tools cause my guest VM session to freeze hard. I tried uninstalling guest Additions CD Images, rebooting, reinstalling, and rebooting but W7's splash boot up screen froze as shown below:

A screen shot of stuck 64-bit W7 HPE SP1's splash screen boot up after uninstalling, rebooting, and reinstalling guest additions CD image.

64w7hpeBootUpSplash.gif (24.56 KiB) Viewed 390 times

Logs:

64bit W7 HPE SP1 (iTunes with apps)-2024-05-03-10-53-34.log

Logs after uninstalling, rebooting, and reinstalling guest additions CD image logs.

(179.66 KiB) Downloaded 10 times

How do I fix this? Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon.

[JKelly]

Solution for WIN 7 is NEVER update Guest Additions on WIN 7, when you update VirtualBox on the host. VirtutalBox has made so many updates over the years, that Win 7 becomes unstable if you use the current versions of Guest Additions. I use the Guest Additions from 6.1.42 (from Jan. of 2023, but nothing else from that version of VirtualBox) on Win7 and I never update it when I install the current VirtualBox on the host.

To install old Guest Additions once you updated it to the current version, you may have problems (I think current Guest Additions makes changes to the Registry that are hard to undo with old versions of Guest Additions). I keep copies of old versions of VM on my harddrive so I can easily revert to the old VM before I did the change to Guest Additions. Sometimes turning off 3d Acceleration will allow you to correct the VM.

For WinXP, I use the Guest Additions from 6.0.12 from Sept. of 2019 and NEVER update it when I install new versions of VirtualBox on the host.

For Win8.1, I use the Guest Additions from 6.1.44 from April 2023 and NEVER update it when I install new versions of VirtualBox on the host.

You can use the current version of Guest Additions on Win 10 and Win 11.

[fth0]

In the 64bit W7 HPE SP1 (iTunes with apps)-2024-05-03-10-53-34.log file, I noticed that early on the VirtualBox WDDM driver was loaded twice, with version numbers 7.0.14 and 7.0.12, so it looks like the latter is some relict from previous times.

I don't know how to solve it cleanly, but I'd suggest to uninstall the VirtualBox Guest Additions, reboot the guest OS and then search for and eliminate all files named "VBox*.*" in the VM. Afterwards, reboot the guest OS again, and try installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions matching your VirtualBox version.