virtualbox.org

I just upgraded from VB 3.2.12 to 4.0.2 and none(!!?!!) of the server guests (Win2K3/Win2K8) will boot!!
Just the black initial screen. In Win2K8 I at least get an error, see attached image.
Last log output is "BIOS:Booting from Hard Disk..." - yeah right...
One of the logs are attached.

All WinXP seems to works fine.
WTF..?!?
VB is btw running on a Win2K8 R2 Enterprise machine...

FYI

I reverted back to VB 3.2.12 and all machines are now up and running again...pheeww..
Need I say that I won't upgrade to VB4 in a near future..? Jeeez - isn't -released- software supposed to be tested?

Worth opening a bug...

No shit Sherlock...

? You clearly don't deserve any help. I vote this topic be locked.

>? You clearly don't deserve any help. I vote this topic be locked.

Well, the problem looks to be real.
And a regression in VMM of VBox v4 is a real possibility, which needs to be reported and sorted out.

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The only problem is that I cannot reproduce this bug, so I won't open it.

Windows 2003 32-bit boots fine here. (Core 2 and VT-x disabled)
He has Pentium 4-based host. (VT-x disabled)

I as well had huge problems with VirtualBox 4 and has reverted to version 3.
Most guests had trouble booting up with various errors and even the host could crash which I have not experienced before.
The roolback to version 3 also was troublesome and the Vista guest was not possible to revert.
To me it looks like the problem is linked to XP host as my Win7 partition don't seem to have the same problems - as I recall.
Just to say, I am not trying to upgrade again before I feel convinced I am not running into the same problems.

I can tell you again, I did test v4.0 since it was in the BETA, and I did not encounter *any* of the problems you mentioned.

So please next time participate in the BETA process of any major VirtualBox version, if you have the time.

Technologov wrote:So please next time participate in the BETA process of any major VirtualBox version, if you have the time.

IMHO, whether the reason was lack of time or not, if you fail to participate in an open beta testing program then you are on pretty shaky moral ground if you later want to complain that the product was inadequately tested. Especially considering that the software in question is free and that was your opportunity to contribute. Following this up by abusing the volunteers who answer his cries for help doesn't exactly earn high marks either.

Seems I got a bit more emotional than normal yesterday, sorry for that.
(All my test-machines running server OS's went poff so I got a slight brain hemorrhage.)
If anyone got abused I sincerely apologize.

I'm a developer by profession myself and take testing very seriously, hence my frustration...
If you need more info regarding this particular problem, just reply to this thread and I'll try to provide feedback.

mpack wrote:Especially considering that the software in question is free and that was your opportunity to contribute. Following this up by abusing the volunteers who answer his cries for help doesn't exactly earn high marks either.

Actually I did tested the beta version and version 4.0.0 on a test partition with Win7 and a single XP guest and didn't experienced major problems.
Recently I needed to test the Sharepoint server and installed it as a guest on the main XP host system, but it turned out it required at least 2GB to run, and therefore upgraded to version 4.0.2 - and ran into huge problems with all the guests. I agree, I should have spend some time to grab logs etc, before reverting to version 3 again, but I really just wanted to get back to a working system.

The Sharepoint is now running on the Win7 partition with VB 4.0.2 and this seems to run pretty stable.

I am not blaming VirtualBox for releasing a major version which obvious has a problem on some systems, but just informing that there could be problem with the upgrade.

I get the same crash when I am using a "Differencing VHD" disk.

If I am using a normal dynamic VHD disk, then Windows boots perfect. But there's something at the boot sequence it doesn't like about the differential VHD. (And it did work with VB3.2, it only stopped working with VB 4.)

EricCote wrote:I get the same crash when I am using a "Differencing VHD" disk.

Could be a point - on my main system most guests are using a writethrough data disk.

Then please open bugs open differencing disks.