Fedora 18 White Screen of Death after restoring

[J.L.]

I usually save the machine state after login for convenience, but Fedora becomes a completely white screen after restoring and moving the cursor. I cannot use the virtual machine until a forced reset is performed.

Why is that the case, and how can I correct it? I have VirtualBox 4.2.6 with Fedora 18 GNOME (including Guest Additions) on Windows 7 64-bit. I've beefed up the default settings, like 128MB Video Memory and 3D Acceleration, but didn't change anything else.

[mpack]

I would have thought a Fedora forum would be a better place for this question. Unless we know why Fedora is crashing, any suggestion as to cause will be pure speculation. A Fedora forum might allow you to find out.

[J.L.]

Okay, I've posted on the official ask forum.

[J.L.]

It's me again, this issue seems to be caused by 3D Acceleration. I don't want to disable it, unless there's no performance hit. Please fix it, because the Fedora forum was no help at all.

[Perryg]

It is being worked on. The best you can do at this point is to log off and then save the session, or just do a normal shut down.

[J.L.]

When I tried logging out, saving the session then restoring, the WSOD still occurs.

I also noticed that sometimes when updating via "Software" all activity stops, especially during Kernel updates. I had to use yum instead.

[Perryg]

Post the guests log file (as an attachment)
See Online Users Manual for the location of the file.

also

From the hosts terminal/command window type VBoxManage showvminfo <VM Name> --details and post here. Replace <VM Name> with the actual name of the VM. Use " " if the name has a space in it.

Note if the host is Windows you need to be in the directory that has VBoxManage.exe for the command to work.

[J.L.]

Here you go (not sure if restoring from snapshots will affect the logs).

Unfortunately, I always get "Access is denied" or "The system cannot find the file specified" when running "VBoxManage showvminfo <VM Name> --details" from "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox". I tried running CMD as admin, changing folder security permissions, and moving the virtual machine, but nothing worked.
I've attached the .vbox file (renamed as .txt) if that helps.

[Perryg]

I see you have the Intel graphic adapter, which often has issues in VirtualBox. I would make sure that you have the latest drivers installed on your host.

Next start the guest clean where you can actually see it and in a terminal run the following and post the results as an attachment:

Code: Select all

glxinfo | grep OpenGL

[J.L.]

The Intel HD Graphics Driver was recently updated by Windows Update, the manufacturer's website has an older version listed. It's definitely the issue, because after switching to my NVIDIA Geforce GTX graphics processor via the NVIDIA Control Panel, the problem is gone. Do I have to re-install Guest Additions for everything to be properly configured?

Anyhow, here's the terminal results of a clean guest start with integrated graphics:

[Perryg]

No you should not need to re-install the GAs, but it also will not hurt so you be the judge.

The glxinfo shows that you are actually using the VBox drivers and not the guests software render so this is as good as it gets at the moment.

[J.L.]

I shut them down before switching graphics processors just in case. So far it's working great, thanks.

Even the Windows Server 2012 Black Screen of Death on full-screen is fixed. Ubuntu works better as well.

[PlasticJesus]

I just blew 2 hours on exactly the same problem. FC18 has been a crappy "upgrade" in general.

The way I fixed it was to 'yum update', then update my nvidia driver. Then /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup.

After that, VirtualBox comes up and WOW! I can actuall hit "Settings' without X crashing!

[J.L.]

It is being worked on. The best you can do at this point is to log off and then save the session, or just do a normal shut down.

The thing is, Ubuntu has a similar issue that still occurs after all the latest updates (on both OS and VirtualBox). What's interesting is that turning off 3D Acceleration or the quoted solution works. Is the issue still being worked on?