Blue Screen of Death After Starting Virtual PC

[Zian]

I got a "Guru Meditation" message from VirtualBox after I tried to start a Virtual PC VM. Then, after I closed the VPC VM and tried to restart my VirtualBox virtual machine, my computer died with a System_Service_Exception stop error.

Is this normal?

I can post VBox.log, VBox.png, and the !analyze -v output from WinDbg if desired.

Details:

Host: Windows 7 on a ThinkPad T400 with discrete graphics
VirtualBox Guest: Debian Linux (Archive Warrior)
Virtual PC Guest: Windows 7

[mpack]

Yes, it is normal to get BSOD when transferring a Windows image from one PC to another, because the hardware tends to be different. The same is true of different VM platforms. The solution is to research the BSOD error code and take steps to remedy it.

Post the VBox.log file as a zipped attachment. Including the .vbox file in the zip would be useful too.

[Zian]

Oops, I forgot that VirtualBox can open different formats.

I meant that I opened a Virtual PC VM by running the Virtual PC product from Microsoft.

[mpack]

Oh right - so you opened a VirtualPC VM in VPC, then you opened a VirtualBox VM in VBox.

I'll bet the problem is a VPC VT-x service being left running, but I'll have a look.

[mpack]

Did you say this was a BSOD? Because this looks like a VM crash, not a BSOD of the Windows guest. The VM crash causes the error handler "Guru Meditation" to kick in :-

00:40:03.763548 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
00:40:03.763551 !!
00:40:03.763551 !! Guru Meditation -4010 (VERR_VMX_VMXON_FAILED)
00:40:03.763578 !!
00:40:03.763613 !!
00:40:03.763614 !! {mappings, <NULL>}
00:40:03.763615 !!

So it is indeed VT-x (a.k.a. VMX) related, however this is not the typical VT-x failure I see. The log says that VT-x was successfully enabled, but then a short time later we get the above error. It implies that VT-x was unlocked, but not fully available to VBox either.

What version of Virtual PC was this?

I think it would be good if you raised a BugTracker ticket for this one, posting a description which includes a link to this discussion. BugTracker is a separate system, but your OSSO login will work. I suggest you use the same nickname there as here. There's no way to know if this is actually a bug, and if so whose bug it is, but the devs can sort that out.

In the meantime, you have a number of workarounds :-
1. Stop using VPC, i.e. use VBox for everything.
2. Leave longer between the two runs (maybe some background VPC process needs to time out).
3. Turn off VT-x in the VBox guest settings (you only allocate 512MB RAM so I assume it isn't a 64bit guest).

[Zian]

Thank you for the advice.

I've posted to the bug tracker and am considering using an overpowered desktop computer as a virtual machine server to run everything with VirtualBox.