Hang/Crash when trying to choose disc

[Twisted Lucidity]

Host: Windows 7 64-bit
VBox: 4.2.0

Whenever I try to add a new hard-drive (or do anything media related really). If I select "Use existing disk", VBox totally locks up and will often be killed by Windows as a crashed program. Sometimes though, an Explorer window does appear - it just takes a very, very long time. Even just going to "Devices - CD/DVD Devices" will cause VBox to lock for a while.

I can see some errors in VBoxSVC.log (attached) but I am not sure what they relate to. There was a version 4.1.8 installed, but I removed that before installing 4.2.

I've not observed this behaviour before.

[Twisted Lucidity]

Typical. The second; the very second I post this and it stops happening.

[Twisted Lucidity]

I recant what I said - it's still happening.

Dropping down "Devices" causes VBox to hang for about 30 seconds, as does trying to select a new disc image for the CD drive.

[klaus]

The tiny log snippet doesn't say much without knowing details about what you did at that time. Could be 100% normal.

I suspect that the temporary hang is due to a problem with some kind of device enumeration (could be anything which is mentioned in the Devices menu, from network cards over host DVD drives to disk images)... can you check in the virtual media manager if there are any inaccessible disk images? Especially the ones which live on a currently inaccessible network share can cause strange hiccups.

[Twisted Lucidity]

Thanks Klaus, problem is that that's all there is. And it is something very strange about networking, but I have no idea what it could be. VBox is the only application exhibiting the this behaviour for file open dialogs.

Steps to recreate:

• Create a new Guest (any OS, does not matter)
  In VBox Manager, select "Storage" for the new guest.
  Select the empty CD/DVD drive
  Select CD icon on the far right

Expected result:
File-open dialog to display

Actual result:
VBox hangs for a while
Then the "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file..." list will appear
The guest settings dialog will often vanish
If "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file..." is clicked, Windows will often kill VBox as a crashed application.
If it does not, a file-open window will eventually display.
There is a request for a username/password to another server BUT there are no shares to this server, no open files on that server; so reason that I am aware of for VBox to be trying to access that server (nothing in "Virtual Media Manager" or anything like that).

If there somewhere I can check VBox's last known file list, registry entries, config files or something to find out why it is trying to access this server?

edit: I found references to the server in ".VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml" and ".VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml-prev".
So I closed VBox and removed them.
But if I open/close VBox again they come back.
I've checked the registry and they don't seem to be lurking in there; how do I get rid of them permanently?

edit2: Killing the VBoxSVC process did it in the end. Seems like a lot of trouble to have to go to just to remove some file references.

[klaus]

Well, there's a reason why the XML files bear a "DO NOT EDIT" comment. Since the file lists are stored in extradata there are actually official ways of making changes, without manual editing and killing processes.

[Twisted Lucidity]

And those official ways would be...? edit: Found a section in the docs.

To remove doubt - none of the server locations appeared in "Virtual Media Manager" nor have I been playing with "extradata", which is why I resorted to hacking the files.

So I have to remove files from "Virtual Media Manager" and then manually check that the "extradata" is correct?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm just trying to figure out where the heck the random server location came from.

[rudiau]

Hi TL,
Having almost the same problem.
In my case clicking on the small disk on the far right of the Storage setting menu results in the small disk being in the indented state indefinetly. Closing the Storage settings dialogue results in "Not Responding" and then close program dialogue.
Have tried a Repair Installation of Vbox to no avail.

Did you find any resolution to your problem?

HP DV6 3131tx
Windows 8.1(64bit) Host
Two working Guests Ubuntu and Kubuntu (Installed before this problem appeared)

[rudiau]

Above post sorted.
An old Windows 95 CDR disk which the Host could not read was gumming up the system and VBox. Removed the disk and all came good.

HP DV6 3131tx
Windows 8.1(64bit) Host
<del>Two</del> Three working Guests Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Windows ME (Yay).