Possible 3.0.10 compatibility issue?

[TheOtherPhilC]

I installed 3.0.10 a couple of days ago. I haven't gotten around to installing W7 gold; still running W7 RC Ultimate x64 as the host. Is it possible 3.0.10 is incompatible with the RC build of Win7?

While trying to set up some XP clients (using MS Technet iso downloads), I have been experiencing some problems.

(1) A client BSOD while running the XP installer. (DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) This happened just as I was entering the product key. I ended up having to trash that installation and start over from scratch. Possibly this problem may be due to trying to do two XP installs at the same time. While the first install (XP Pro w/SP2) was running, I created a 2nd VM and started installing it (using a different ISO, XP Pro w/SP3). Got that started, and about two minutes later, the SP2 install rebooted and wanted its key. BSOD came up on entering the 5th letter. After a full reinstall, that VM now seems to be running OK. Are multiple concurrent installations a no-no? Seems like they should be totally independent, particularly since they were using different ISOs.

(2) The SP3 install seems to be having video issues. After Windows Update installs a bunch of updates, it asks to reboot. I click OK, it starts to shutdown, and at some point that appears to be where it should actually reboot, the client window gets a weird pattern consisting of narrow vertical stripes in the top 2/3 and solid black in the bottom 1/3. No HD activity or any other activity I can detect. Just scrambled video and an apparently dead VM. Machine/Reset results in Windows wanting to reinstall all of the same stuff. This happened about four times. The last time, although I still got the weird pattern, at least the updates were accepted as installed.

On the previous build of VBox, an OEM version of XP Pro (circa 2004 DVD) installed and ran flawlessly as a guest. With too many things changing at once, I am uncertain at this point whether my issues are in VBox, my usage of it, or some XP issue.

[Sasquatch]

I suspect some Windows issues. The garbled display you got in the VM is a malformed BSOD (malformed as in display corruption upon showing it).

The BSOD during install could indeed be from simultaneous installation. Due to the heavy load on the Host, the Guest might get an unverified instruction from the CPU and BSODs on that. You can run more than one VM at the same time, but doing some heavy work is not advised unless you have a powerful enough system (multi-core, one core for each VM, one left for the Host).