virtualbox.org

Hi All --

I'm having a problem where my guest OS will crash after a certain amount of time. I have a great deal of user & admin experience with other virtualization platforms, but have never experienced the guest crashing like this. I am rather new to VirtualBox.

The crash appears when nothing in particular is running on the VM. I have outlook open, but am not really even using it. To be specific, I have never been actively using the OS when it has crashed. I have instead switched back to it and found that it was missing with the main virtualbox control window showing that the machine was in an "Aborted" state.

It's crashed maybe twice a day for the 3 days I have been running virtualbox. I am writing because I don't even know where to start in debugging the problem.

Are there any general or specific tips for debugging the crash? Files I can include that would help in sniffing out the problem? Settings that would be important?

I'm using

• Host: Ubuntu 9.04
• VirtualBox 3.0.2 Non-Free edition.
• Guest: Vista Business 32-bit
• VB Tools Installed
• 4096MB of base memory
• 2 Processors (VTx enabled)
• 3d support disabled
• Bridged Networking
• 24MB of Video Memory

I have gotten crashes when I was using 1 CPU & VT-x disabled as well.

Sorry, I'm so new that I can't even articulate the problem correctly yet.

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

- dpb

The next time it crashes before you start it again look at the VirtualBox log files and see if it gives you a reason.
Also you should see the reason for the crash in the Vista system logs. Either way it will be hard to find without this information.
Problem reports and solutions will also give you insight. just type that in the start search window under the start button.

Perryg wrote:The next time it crashes before you start it again look at the VirtualBox log files and see if it gives you a reason.
Also you should see the reason for the crash in the Vista system logs. Either way it will be hard to find without this information.
Problem reports and solutions will also give you insight. just type that in the start search window under the start button.

Hi Perry -- Thanks for responding. I have had it abort a couple more times, but never with very interesting information (at least to me). This most recent abort has something that appears more interesting, though it may not be. I've attached the logfile to the post.

I have also examined the Windows Event Log and found nothing that stood out. Nothing about the machine shutting down, or a h/w failure, etc. The Problem Reports and Solutions dialog appears like it would be useful, but it displays a few reports that do not appear to be fatal, and are also quite old, nothing within the past week, certainly nothing from today when the crash happened again.

FYI, the other aborts I experienced did not generate the same log pattern as this one, with all the "catch-up attempt" messages, those messages do not exist in my other log files from crashes.

Is there anything else I could look at to solve this? It's very frustrating, and seems to be totally unaviodable by me. I was taking no action on the VM when this happened. I was typing in a brower on my linux host, and all of a sudden the guest vm disappeared (aborted).

Thanks for your help...

- dpb

You know I have done some reading about the error and everything I find says to turn the memory down some.
Try setting you RAM to the guest down to (3072 meg) or no more than (3584 meg) and see if it crashes any more.

Hi --

I reduced the memory to 3072MB, and tried to run again, it eventually crashed (overnight).

I have attached the log... Once again, nothing is showing up on the Windows side of things (event log, etc).

Thanks!

- dpb

Couple of things to try.
1. Be sure that in the guest you have the screen saver and power management turned off.
Then if it still crashes:
2. You can try disabling the USB for a while to see if it stops crashing. Let us know.