Visual Studio 2010 causing Virtualbox 4.1.2 to crash

[hms]

Hi guys, I recently installed Virtualbox 4.1.2 (+guest additions) on my Macbook Pro and am running Lion OS X (host) and Windows 7 (guest).

I installed Visual Studio 2010 for development, but am having some problems. When I open a project, I am able to edit code without any problems, but as soon as I try to select an item from the "Toolbox" (to create a button for example, or textbox), VirtualBox Guest all together crashes! I cannot do anything but "Turn power off"!

My current virtualbox setup is:
3GB RAM
PIIX3
IO APIC (enabled)
2CPUs
96MBs Video memory

I have disabled 3D Acceleration and Audio but that did not help. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Cheers,
HMS

Update: just tried Reinstalling Visual Studio with no luck!

[kriechi]

same problem here.

only killing the VM and a fresh start works. CMD-R for reset results in an endless bootscreen.

my VM settings:
3GB RAM
VT-x/AMD-V
128MB video, 2D and 3D
1 shared folder
Win7 x64 with all updates
Visual Studio 2010 with all updates

my host:
MacBookPro mid2010 with 8GB RAM, MacOS 10.6.8
Virtualbox 4.1.2

edit:
only log-entries I get are these:

00:01:57.248 RTC: period=0x20 (32) 1024 Hz
00:01:59.411 RTC: period=0x200 (512) 64 Hz

then the whole VM is frozen.

[ThinkerIV]

Any developments on this problem. I am having the exact same issue. I will be willing to do any sort of testing or error reporting that will help resolve this issue. If you know of a good thing to try or a good log to check, just let me know.

The instant I select an item in the toolbox the whole system freezes. Then in few seconds the OS just blinks off. When I restart windows it eternally hangs in boot up. Thanks for any ideas you may have.

[znrt]

Having the exact same problem too. Host is Windows 7-64. Guest is also Windows 7-64. I can power off and restore snapshot. But if I try to design a form, simply selecting an item in the toolbox freezes the guest OS and I must restore the snapshot again.

[WorkingDave]

Same problem here too unfortunately.

[ThinkerIV]

Do any of you have any suggestions on who to contact or how to push this issue so that a bug fix is made for it. This is my main development machine and I will need to buy a whole new computer if this can't be resolved. Do you think it is a bug in VirtualBox or is there a chance that it is just a configuration issue, and it could be fixed by playing with all the different settings?

[znrt]

Installed VS2010 on VMWare Player Win 7 host with no problems. I don't think its a configuration issue as I used the default installation options, exactly the same as when I tried on Virtualbox. Unfortunately I don't think VMWare player exists for Mac OS. I prefer Virtualbox because it supports multiple snapshots, while VMWare player doesn't.

[liudibo]

I've updated VB to 4.1.4 r74291. Seems VS 2010 works great!

Please have a try!

[hms]

Just installed 4.1.4 r74291 and still have the same problem.

Just updated Guest Additions as well and it seems to be working now! I will test this properly over the next few days and post feedback here.

I've updated VB to 4.1.4 r74291. Seems VS 2010 works great!

Please have a try!

liudibo: what are your virtual box settings?

[ThinkerIV]

Awesome. The update also solves the problem with my Fedora 15 host. I tried the update earlier to see if it would fix the issue, and I thought it did not. However, I had not installed the updated guest addons. After I did that it solved the problem. Thanks to all of you for your input.

[tweex]

My Win7-32 VM is blinking off when I open a Visual Studio project (host is Ubuntu 11.10-64). I've tried VB 4.1.12 and 4.1.14, both with corresponding Guest Additions. I also tried removing a recent VS update (KB2644980), turning on '3D Acceleration' and '2D Video Acceleration' and turning off 'Nested Paging'. Win7 has crashed 6 times now in the very same way. Perhaps this is bug 9628.

Are there any work-arounds?

[Ken Hagan]

@tweex: It depends what you mean by blinking.

I've had display-related problems with VS2010 that could be worked around by logging into the guest VM using RDP rather than directly at the "console". I also found they went away a few versions later, but as it happens I've just upgraded to 4.1.14 and they are back, so I'm using RDP again. I suspect the underlying problem is very sensitive to the timing of some obscure video feature.

[tweex]

Sorry for being unclear. By "blinking off" I mean the entire VM spontaneously reboots--as if I had pushed the virtual reset button (hostkey+R). Everything I had open in Windows is gone and I see the Oracle VirtualBox simulated BIOS screen in its place. I assume RDP would not help this.

[tweex]

I have been unable to find a work-around for this issue. I need access to Visual Studio, so I'm looking into setting up a physical Windows box so I can continue my work. It's a real shame that such a critical bug seems to not be getting any attention by the developers.