Windows XP guest keeps restarting

[allenbradley]

Hello all.

I am running an Ubuntu 9.10 host with Windows XP as guest. I was running virtualbox-2.2 (from the repositories) earlier. Since the Virtualbox kernel module kept breaking (in the sense, it would ask me to recompile the kernel module, and recompiling would fail 99% of the time), I upgraded to version 3.1.4. Upon installation, WIndows XP booted successfully, and I was installing the guest additions. There, I was given a choice and I installed the experimental Direct3D drivers. The installation was successful and I was asked to reboot. I restarted the machine, and my troubles began. Since then, whenever I start the Windows VM, the machine starts, shows me the login screen. When I move the mouse pointer, the Machine Crashes and shows me the opening Virtualbox screen. I have tried removing, reinstalling Virtualbox multiple times, with no avail. The io-apic is checked and I have unchecked the nested paging option, with no avail.
Here is a copy of the VBox.log file : http://omploader.org/vM2p2eg. Please help me resolve the issue as I have a couple of important things in my VM.

Thanks and Regards,
allenbradley

[Perryg]

Uncheck the IO APIC and then boot the Windows guest in safe mode.
By having this check on you are forcing the SMP function of Windows and it will require a different kernel.
You may need to do a system restore of the guest to a point just before you updated VirtualBox.

[allenbradley]

PerryG, thanks for the quick reply. The weirdest thing happened. I unchecked IO-APIC as you suggested, and tried to restart in safe mode, but Windows kept BSODding me(without creating any logs whatsoever). Finally, by accident, I chose the Boot Normally option, and it worked, without any problems. I repeated the procedure and it worked(with the occasional BSOD). Last I checked, The IO-APIC box is still unchecked. What's happening here? Is it safe to continue with the IO-APIC? Finally, where are BSOD logs stored?

Thanks and Regards,
allenbradley

PS : A little info on the host :
Ubuntu 9.10 (Kernel 2.6.31-15) running AwesomeWM,
T7250 Intel Processor, with 4GB Ram

[Perryg]

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Phrase that has served me well in the past. Anyway running 32 bit XP on a 32 bit host and turning on IO APIC is asking for problems. It did not used to be but somewhere along the version updates VirtualBox decided to set the VT-x/AMD-v flag to true by default. Starting the guest it sees this and if IO APIC is turned on it will try to install the multiprocessor kernel and not very well I am afraid.

[allenbradley]

Meh, you're probably right. I'll just stop tinkering with the settings. Thanks for the protip anyway.

PS : Where are BSOD logs stored?

[Perryg]

The guest may have created a mini dump or a system dump but they are so hard to read and if you don't have the debugging software really useless. You could look at the system events in the guest and see if it provides any data. You can also set the Windows guest to not reboot on BSOD and read the data from the screen. You could look at the guest log file in VirtualBox and see if it registers there as well, but more times then not the crash keeps it from registering in the logs.

[Etepetete]

This tool makes reading the mini-dump files easy. It will have to be installed on the guest system. Try booting the guest in safe mode and see if you can install and use the tool.

[rjo98]

Also, just something I thought of after reading this and from what i can remember from previous release notes and whatnot, the experimental 3d driver only loads up after a restart, so perhaps it was choking on that too causing the constant restarts. or at least not helping the situation.