Windows7 Guest Intermittently Hangs

[trampgeek]

I can't find any other references to this problem ... hope I haven't missed them.

I'm running VirtualBox 3.2.6 with an Ubuntu 10.4 host on a ThinkPad T410/Intel Core i5. I have both a WinXP guest and a Windows7 guest. The former performs faultlessly but the latter hangs every 5 minutes or so for about 10 seconds. A couple of seconds into the hang, the Windows cursor turns into a spinning torus. Normal service usually resumes after the hang except that sometimes, e.g. when I'm saving a file, I get told the file is read-only and I have to save it to a different name.

Every such occurrence is accompanied by four lines to the VM's log file, such as the following:

01:34:30.452 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#1: IDLE IMMEDIATE, CmdIf=0xe0 (-1 usec ago)
01:34:30.452 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#1: aborting current command
01:34:40.785 PIIX3 ATA: Ctl#0: RESET, DevSel=0 AIOIf=0 CmdIf0=0xc8 (-1 usec ago) CmdIf1=0xe1 (-1 usec ago)
01:34:40.786 PIIX3 ATA: Ctl#0: finished processing RESET

The time stamps and command codes vary, but otherwise it's always the same four lines.

This problem is making my Windows7 guest very irritating to use.

Has anyone else seen this problem?

[Perryg]

Few things to try:
Make sure that host IO/Cache is enabled in the guest controller section of VB.
Look for things in Windows 7 that is set to check things periodically. (virus, File sync, Etc.)
Also we will need to know more about the setup to really be able to help.
Post the Hosts configuration and post the guests log file (as an attachment)

[trampgeek]

Thanks for the prompt response Perryg.

Host IO/Cache is enabled.

I've been trying to get a log file showing lots of occurrences of the problem and in the process have got a few vague inklings of what's happening. The problems occur in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. Those are the two of the three main apps I use in VirtualBox; the third is VisualStudio and I don't think I've seen the problems there, probably because when I'm using that I'm not operating out of shared folders.

The "hanging" events are, I'm pretty sure, occurring during the autosaves. The files I'm editing are all buried down a few layers in a shared folder that's actually the home directory of my Linux filesystem. I also suspect, but haven't yet proved, that once the problem has started with any particular file it persists on every autosave and ultimately culminates in my final close or manual save being disallowed because the file is (now) marked Read Only. [Edit: No, that turns out not to be the case or anyway not if I'm using Excel as I am right now. I just had several hangs (with the corresponding 4 lines in the log file each time) but manual saving/closing the file was unaffected.] It's possible the problem is related to http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/4381.

I'll now attach the VM config file (I assume that's what you mean by "host configuration"?) and a couple of logs that each show 3 or 4 occurrences of the problem.

Many thanks for any help you can offer. I must say that apart from the occasional such issue, I'm loving VirtualBox and could hardly live without it nowadays.

[trampgeek]

It occurs to me you probably wanted the lshw output. Attached to this posting.

[Perryg]

I see a 32 bit host OS and a 32 bit guest OS.
Logs show you assigning close to 2 GB or RAM which should be OK except VBox suggests limiting (on 32-bit) this to 1/2 of the available RAM. I have seen issues when people try to go over the 1.5 GB boundary and setting their guests to 1.499 GB solved their problems.
Your PC has all of the features to support 64-bit host and guests so I am curious as to why you are not using it? Even with 32 bit guests if the host was 64-bit this opens the gates to using more memory, SMP and just better performance IMHO.
Another thing that you can try to help prove your point is to run local for a day and see if it is the shared folders.

Other than that I see no real reason for your problems. If this does not help you will need to post a ticket in bugtracker to see what the DEVs have to say. You will need to setup up an account there as it is on a different system and don't forget to post these log files (as an attachment). Post the ticket link here too so others that have this problem can benefit.

[trampgeek]

Well, I've solved my problem, if not the actual underlying bug. I noticed that the IDLE IMMEDIATE errors always occurred on LUN#1, which was an extra disk I'd added to accommodate the Microsoft Office install. And I'd also observed that problems only occurred when running Office applications. So all I did to eliminate the issue was uninstall Office, make my main virtual disk bigger, then reinstall Office on that disk, removing the second disk altogether. All problems have gone away.