Vista Host, XP Guest: VM hangs on restart within VBox

[Gigantix]

XP Guest runs without any problems on Vista Host, but only once per Vista session.
After shutting down XP within Virtualbox and trying to start the virtual XP again, startup fails. It looks as if the VM cannot boot. No errormessages though, just the normal startup screen of the VM, but nothing is happening: no CPU activity, no extra RAM being used. "Program is not responding". I can shut the VM process off within taskmanager, after which I am able to shut down VBox normally.
After restart Vbox the VM is listed as 'aborted'.
Killing VBoxSVC.exe as offered in the "out-of-process COM server issue" doesn't solve this problem.
A workaround is a cold reboot of Vista (host), but I'm not happy with this situation

Does anyone know what might be the problem and how to solve it?



Vbox Logfile:

00:00:00.897 VirtualBox 2.1.2 r41885 win.x86 (Jan 21 2009 18:08:12) release log
00:00:00.897 Log opened 2009-02-01T16:38:42.750800000Z
00:00:00.897 OS Product: Windows Vista Home Basic Edition
00:00:00.897 OS Release: 6.0.6001
00:00:00.897 OS Service Pack: 1
00:00:00.897 Package type: WINDOWS_32BITS_GENERIC
00:00:01.047 SUP: Loaded VMMR0.r0 (C:\PROGRA~1\Sun\XVMVIR~1/VMMR0.r0) at 0x84b74060 - ModuleInit at 0000000084b83170 and ModuleTerm at 0000000084b831d0
00:00:01.047 SUP: VMMR0EntryEx located at 0000000084b83ac0, VMMR0EntryFast at 0000000084b83340 and VMMR0EntryInt at 0000000084b83330
00:00:01.047 SUP: windbg> .reload /f C:\PROGRA~1\Sun\XVMVIR~1/VMMR0.r0=0x84b74060
00:00:01.315 VBoxSharedClipboard mode: Bidirectional
[/b]

[Gigantix]

For anyone who is interested: problem is solved: it had to do with the location of the harddisk image, which was into the default folder chosen by VBox: c:\users\user\.Virtualbox\harddisks\
These user folders have limited rights, and after VM's first run as administrator, it somehow cannot be accessed at a second run of VM under the VISTA host. Vista doesn't allow it somehow.

I cloned the harddisk to the rootfolder c:\ and created a new virtual machine from this cloned folder. Starts up everytime.

[Phillyidol]

Hey Gigantix,

I'm having a like issue, where I have XP (SP3 + all updates) running as a guest on my Vista host, and everything works very well (vboxguestadditions, mouse, graphics, etc.), except when I do a restart in XP (i.e. like when you run an update in XP and it prompts for a auto-restart). The XP-OS goes down ok, but then that's it - it doesn't come back up . I just get a blank (black) screen, and I have to do a reset to get it to come back up.

If I'm reading you correctly, your issue was with VB itself, and not the OS part, but figured I'd ask, as it's kinda/sorta/almost/like your issue, so I'm also gonna try moving it to the C: root, and see if that corrects the issue, but I'm thinking it's a display issue, so if you (or anyone else) has a similar issue (or a fix), I'd appreciate the points .

Cheers

[Perryg]

Honestly if this is a permission problem then there must have been a problem with the install. Have you tried to reinstall VirtualBox by right clicking the install icon and then left click on run as admin? Once the install program asks select repair and answer any and all questions positively. Reboot when complete and see if the problems persists.

[dbursik]

Hey Gigantix,

I'm having a like issue, where I have XP (SP3 + all updates) running as a guest on my Vista host, and everything works very well (vboxguestadditions, mouse, graphics, etc.), except when I do a restart in XP (i.e. like when you run an update in XP and it prompts for a auto-restart). The XP-OS goes down ok, but then that's it - it doesn't come back up . I just get a blank (black) screen, and I have to do a reset to get it to come back up.

If I'm reading you correctly, your issue was with VB itself, and not the OS part, but figured I'd ask, as it's kinda/sorta/almost/like your issue, so I'm also gonna try moving it to the C: root, and see if that corrects the issue, but I'm thinking it's a display issue, so if you (or anyone else) has a similar issue (or a fix), I'd appreciate the points .

Cheers

I'm having the same problem with a Win XP guest on a Mac OS X (Leopard) host. Looks like many/most of my Windows updates are not getting completely installed b/c I have to power off the VM to get back from the black screen.

EDIT: I may have been having this problem before upgrading to 3.0, but I definitely had it after the upgrade. Turning off new cpu/acceleration features seems to have cleared up the problem (eventually); apparently I needed to re-install the Windows guest kernel to use the new features.