Frequent crashes of VirtualBox

[darrenc]

Hi, I'm new to VirtualBox having come from Windows VPC, which does not work in Win 7. Since installing VirtualBox, several times per day the VirtualBox GUI crashes on me. This is on an HP Pavilion laptop running Windows 7 RC 64bit. Debian is my primary guest, but I've also installed Sabayon and Mint to try to rule out the problem coming from the guest, and I do have the same issues with all 3 guests.

As it is, the VirtualBox GUI crashes seemingly at random. This occurs anywhere from within 2-3 minutes of starting VirtualBox, to a max of somewhere around 30 minutes or so of starting it. It never goes longer than that without the crash, and seems totally independent of any specific activity in either the host or the guest. Windows always reports the problem as the VirtualBox GUI has stopped working with an appcrash in VirtualBox.exe The fault modules reported by Windows vary, and can be any of the following: QtCoreVBox4.dll, ole32.dll, QtGuiVBox4.dll, MSVCR80.dll and, only seen once, the VirtualBox service itself (VBoxSVC.exe).

I've tried changing various different setting in VirtualBox, as well as uninstalling and reinstalling VirtualBox, none of which seem to have any effect. It has also continued through an upgrade of VirtualBox. I have no doubt that the problem is somewhere in Windows, I just have no clue where to begin trying to solve it. I would appreciate any advice anyone may have.

[vbox4me2]

As of today vbox 3.04 isn't yet fully optimized for W7 as W7 only recently has gone RTM, you will have to wait for the next version which should iron out most W7 problems. Moving to W7 Hosts.

[mpack]

Were these VMs imported from VPC or did you recreate them from scratch as VBox VMs?

Also, what happens if you close the VirtualBox GUI frontend after launching the VM. Still crash?

[darrenc]

Were these VMs imported from VPC or did you recreate them from scratch as VBox VMs?

The were all created from scratch directly in VirtualBox, all as new installs from mounted distro iso files.

Also, what happens if you close the VirtualBox GUI frontend after launching the VM. Still crash?

Yep, just tried both Debian and Mint to make certain, though I was pretty sure I had closed the frontend before. One stayed up less than 10 minutes, the other stayed up 34 minutes.

Also, if it's of any significance, if I have multiple VMs open at the same time, they don't all go down together (if the frontend was causing it, I would sort of expect they probably would all go together). In those cases, after Windows reports the crash in one, the other still works until it crashes separately on its own.

[mpack]

Also, what happens if you close the VirtualBox GUI frontend after launching the VM. Still crash?

Yep, just tried both Debian and Mint to make certain, though I was pretty sure I had closed the frontend before. One stayed up less than 10 minutes, the other stayed up 34 minutes.

The crashes you were reporting before (all but one) - all seemed to be with the QT4 libraries of the main frontend. If it still crashes when that frontend isn't running then it does sound like a basic incompatibility, as VBox4me was saying.

[darrenc]

Thanks for the info. The two that I got when I know for a fact the frontend was closed were both from QtCoreVBox4.dll, so I guess I'm just out of luck for a while.

Thanks for your help.