suddenly getting HostMemoryLow, was working fine yesterday

[MattC1234]

I see some other posts similar to this one, admins please feel free to merge if that's best.

I have been running VirtualBox with a Win 7 host and Win 7 guests for about a year now with no issues.

Today, I got a HostMemory error upon booting. As far as I know, nothing has changed on the host (although I do have automatic Windows updates running on both the hosts and guests).

I was running 4.0.12 this morning. I updated to 4.1.8 in hopes of fixing the problem, but the error was exactly the same.

All of my guest machines (Linux and Windows) are defined to use 5632MB of memory on a 8184MB host. I can get the windows machines to boot by setting their memory down to 3000MB, but this is low enough that performance is impaired when I actually try to use them (Visual Studio/MS SQL development). I did have one guest running at 3500MB for about 3 hours, and then it crashed with the HostMemoryLow error.

I have 3 Windows 7 guests and they all get this error. My Linux guest machines all boot just fine using 5632 MB of memory.

Having this problem appear out of the blue is very strange. I tried some suggestions from old threads like turning off antivirus software, the superfetch service, guest network card poweron settings. Did several host machine reboots along the way. Nothing I tried helped.

I've attached a log file. Any suggestions are appreciated, this is really gonna mess me up if I can't find a fix.

[AtlantaRene]

I had a similar problem today. I removed memory from my system to get down to 4GB. It fixed my problem. I don't know if you can work in such memory but it's worth a test.

Please let me know if it helps

-- Rene

[pb5335]

I have the similar problem.
HOST: Windows 7 host 6GB memory ;
GUEST: Windows 7 Guest with 2G memory allocated.
The current configuration had been working the morning of 2/2. The Host had been running since 2/1. The evening of 2/2 is when the problem presented itself.

"resolved" problem by dropping to guest memory allocation 1G memory, i tried a few other values between 1024 and 2048 that didn't work. Only started working with 1024.

[michaln]

Well, what changed? It wasn't VirtualBox. So it must have been something else.

If anyone still has VBox.log for a now non-working VM from when it still did work, please capture them and compare with the current log(s)!

We unfortunately can't help much if we can't reproduce the problem, and so far we can't.

For what it's worth, I can still start a 4GB VM and a 2GB VM on an 8GB system (Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit).

[MattC1234]

I was able to fix (work around) the problem by using the System Restore feature on my host machine, and restoring an automatically created restore point from 01/30/2012.

After running the restore I am able to boot VMs with > 3GB memory again.

To get the VMs to boot I did have to uninstall VirtualBox 4.1.8, and I then reinstalled VirtualBox 4.0.12 again.

I did not change any of my guest machines (other than restoring large memory values).

I notice there is an intermediate restore point on 2/2/2012 which Windows Update describes as a "Critical Update". One would think that my reversion removed this update, but I don't see it queued in the update list again. At any rate, since reverting fixed the problem, I'm guessing it was something that came down via Windows Update. (Update: I do have a couple of notifications regarding Microsoft Security Essentials updates in my system tray. I turned off MSSE yesterday during troubleshooting, but who knows. Eventually I'll apply them and see what happens, will post back here if they're to blame.)

For now I have Windows Update set to download but not install. This sucks, but I'm hoping it's temporary.

Michaln, if there is something I can do to help you guys troubleshoot (create a log? how do I do that on demand?), let me know.

[pb5335]

Going to a restore point from 1/29 10ish pm also resolved the issue for me as well. As near as i can tell there was one KB applied KB2585542 in the timeframe where it virtual box stopped working normally. Uninstalling the KB did not do it alone but moving the restore point did.

[MattC1234]

The continuing saga. Woke up this morning, VB was borked again.

My 1/30 restore point had fallen off the list of options, and asking to see more restore points didn't reveal it. Restoring to the earliest point on 2/2 didn't work. Fortunately, I had taken a new manual restore point once I got things working yesterday, and restoring to that did work. However, I'm expecting whatever secret thing to be reinstalled again and I'll probably have to restore again tomorrow.

I recommend keeping extra restore points handy if you're in this situation.

[piehlm]

I've been having the same issue all weekend. It actually started out with me getting the critical meditation message. I uninstalled and re-installed 4.1.6, and then it changed to the memory issue.

vbox.log

This is the critical log I was getting.

(81.14 KiB) Downloaded 36 times

If anyone finds a real fix for this, I'd love to hear it. I only windows updates that I've installed were around the .net 4 stuff, I've tried uninstalling the udpates, but I can't rid of them cleanly.
Thanks,
Mike

[P0rridge]

I have this as well.

Some information that might help de-bug.

As part of my search for a fix I did a clean build of my Ubuntu client with the latest version of Ubuntu 64 bit. Then I went to install MyEclipse for Spring 10.0 (linux). Downloaded the install file into the host (Win 7 Prof 64 bit) and tried to install MyEclipse from within the client, accessing the install file using a shared folder.

MyEclipse install started but then gave an error, saying not enough memory, it requires a minimum amount of memory and it only has 5gig+ physical memory (which would be right), and 0 logical memory (which sounds wrong). So I copied the install file into the client and then ran it, at which point VB gave the original HostMemoryLow message.

Hope this helps - I need a fix bad.

Greg

[JDCarroll]

I'm seeing this too. I can knock the VM down to 1G to get it started, but that's not ideal and certainly not a permanent solution. Another VM that I have, though, that was SAVED and not shut down loads fine with 3G of memory. Same symptoms as everyone else:

Worked on Friday, not today
Win64 host
VB 4.1.8 installed; re-installed to no effect
Nothing changed
HP laptop with 6G RAM
Both Windows and Linux guests are failing
Can't create new VM's (not with decent RAM)

Attaching log of machine that was saved and starts fine and one that fails on starting

[JTK]

Same problem here. Happened after I updated to Virtualbox 4.1.8, trying 4.1.6 now.

[Andersen Silva]

This is definitely a Windows-specific issue. I have a Mac OS X (Lion) host, which is still working fine, and a Windows 7 Professional host, which hasn't been working fine since Friday; both are running 4.1.8 r75467, both have 8 GB of RAM and 64-bit OSes on 64-bit architectures, but the Win7 host is now only allowing me to run one VM at a time where I used to regularly have two (and sometimes even three) running at once, and the Mac host is still able to handle multiple VMs. There's a specific VM I run constantly, with 2400 MB of RAM allocated, and it's fine by itself, but if I try to fire up a second VM with 2800 MB of RAM allocated, that second one will give the error; if I shut down the first and run the second by itself, however, it boots up fine. It seems likely that a Windows Update is to blame.

[bobalot]

Was having the same problem and Windows Virtual PC was giving a similar error message. Fixed it by killing 'GoogleCrashHandler64.exe' in task manager (might need to show process from all users). Got this info from here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 184dec89ff

[JDCarroll]

Confirmed!!! Bob, I could kiss you.

[Andersen Silva]

I second that confirmation, though I'm not quite sure I'd kiss you, bobalot. Maybe a friendly man-hug. Regardless, killing that process did allow my second VM to start normally. Thanks for sharing that info!

Seems I owe Microsoft an apology, too, because apparently it's Google's issue this time.