WinXP Guest fails to start new programs

[Greyed]

Did a search back about a month to see if anyone else has reported this issue. I don't think it has.

I have a WinXP guest on a WinXP host which I use to VPN into sites which are hostile to my local connection. I have been successfully doing this since the 2.2.x days. With the reset problems with networking in 3.0.0 - 3.0.4 I bounced between 2.2.4 and the 3.0.x series a few times.

Somewhere in that time I noticed that my WinXP guest was able to start up programs for the first 3-4 minutes of operation. After that time it would not open any new programs. Any programs that are running prior to that point (and the exact time moves around, sometime 2 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, etc) will continue to run and operate normally. Any program started after that point silently fails. I cannot even shut down the guest cleanly as the shut-down dialog does not appear.

This first appeared on one of the trips into 3.0.x land. I downgraded to 2.2.4 and it still occurred. So then I hypothesized that it was because of the constant up/downgrades on the guest additions. So recently, under 3.0.6, I wiped out the previous install and reinstalled XP from scratch. I installed only the 3.0.6 guest additions, shut down the VM and created a snapshot at that point so no matter what I can revert to that clean install.

This evening when remoting into a site the behavior occurred again. IE started up fine but between IE starting and the Cisco VPN statup program did its thing this non-starting program behavior occurred again. It was only the 3rd reboot on the fresh XP install, 2nd outgoing VPN connection with the first being to the same site.

I am at a loss as to where to go from here. I would prefer to keep with the 3.0.x. line but I need this functional. Which implies, to me, downgrading back to 2.2.4, nuking this image and doing another fresh install. However, here's the kick in the pants. I also have a Server 2003 guest (test machine for the software I support) which has gone through the exact same process as the XP guest. It has not had the same problem appear. I also have an XUbuntu VM which works perfectly fine. An older Win2k remote-access VM also works, for the most part. Which is to mean that it has issues unrelated to VBox. It is only the XP guest which is having this non-starting program problem.

Has anyone else seen this?

[vbox4me2]

Nope, I use 2.24 and a XP guest with a vista Host, cisco vpn works fine for many hours on end.

[cheche]

Well,
I have a similar problem but I am preety sure that it is the guest additions. And I am not able to tell where to start looking.