XP hang while booting, VirtualBox 3.1.4 and 3.1.2

[santosh_gairola]

Seems this is same old topic, but doesn't go away.
I have XP-SP3 installed in my MacBookPro OSX 10.6.2, VirtualBox 3.1.4

Every thing was working just fine till yesterday. I shutdown both the OS and went home. Now the I cannot boot XP
I tried to boot it in "safe mode" and found that the boot is stuck after "Mup.sys". This issue suppose to be very old and already fixed (http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/995), but I am hitting it again.

Browsing though topics in this forum, I tried everything:
a. Downgrading to VirtualBox 3.1.2
b. Change base and video memory from 1G and 32M to 512M and 64M (and few other experiments).
c. tried different combination of "PAE/NX", "PIIX4", "IO APIC", etc (I cannot find "APIC").
Nothing work

I wonder why it was working fine till yesterday (for around 3 months)? Perhaps there is some auto-update in XP or OSX with I am not aware of.
I am desperately looking for some help.
I can not risk uninstalling and deleting things, because all my important data is in this guest machine.

[Perryg]

Post the latest log file for the guest (as an attachment)

[santosh_gairola]

This is the log I could find (hope this is the correct one):
/Users/Santosh/Library/VirtualBox/Machines/WinXP-EN/Logs/VBox.log

[Perryg]

The log shows that you have VT-x and it is enabled but IOAPIC is not. Now DON"T do anything yet. I need you to answer a few questions.
(1) when you install Xp was the VT-x and IOAPIC turned on?
(2) do you remember changing anything when you shut down yesterday? Anything no matter how trivial it seems.
(3) Do you have any snapshots.

[santosh_gairola]

Here is the answer:
(1) when you install Xp was the VT-x and IOAPIC turned on?
Ans: VT-x - Enabled IOAPIC - Disabled

(2) do you remember changing anything when you shut down yesterday? Anything no matter how trivial it seems.
Ans: I run Windows in seamless mode. While shutting down there was some error in closing yahoo msgr (Windows "end program"), which I cannot access in seamless mode. So I exited the seamless mode and force close that program. Once the Windows started shutting down, I switch back to seamless mode. All went fine afterward.
No setting change.

(3) Do you have any snapshots.
Sorry, No

Thanks for your help

[Perryg]

OK the first thing to do is make a backup of the XP VDI file. Copy will work.
It is a good thing that you do not have snapshots because this would have caused this to be irretrievable if you had.
Read this http://www.aitechsolutions.net/mupdotsysXPhang.html it explains what is really going on including a corrupt system which may have happened when you killed the process. (not sure about that).

You can turn the ACPI on and off with the command:

Code: Select all

VBoxManage modifyvm <uuid|name> --acpi on|off

It was removed from the GUI because you rarely need to change it.

After you have tried this then try to follow some of the suggestions in the article I sent.
Good Luck!

EDIT: if this fails and all else fails then you can create a new copy of XP and then attach this one as a second drive. That way you should be able to retrieve your data.
I can not stress enough that BACKUPS will save your bacon. I backup weekly. Have ever since I lost a years worth of work. That was over 20 years ago and you never forget it.

[santosh_gairola]

Thanks
I will try and post the status.
Really appreciate!