Virtualbox 4.3.0 - Unable to start any guests

[apiening]

Hi VBox users,

I was too impatient this time waiting for the update to 4.3.0 to get active over the "check for updates" feature of VBox. I installed VirtualBox for MacOSX (v 10.8.5 here) from the VirtualBox Downloads page to be able to check out the screen recording feature.

Since the update to 4.3.0 none of my guest would start anymore: I'm left with a black VBox video screen and a rotating beachball... forever. I tried to reinstall and reboot nothing changed. There is no error message. Downgrading to version 4.2.18 brought everything back to normal.

I can wait for 4.3.1 for this to be fixed but since no one reported this issue I wonder if I'm the only one?

If there's a chance for me to provide more helpful details, please feel free to ask.

Thank you in advance,

Andreas Piening

[Ramshankar]

Please provide VBox.log for the VM you tried to start with 4.3. If you've switched back to 4.2, you'll have to find the right log. The one with "VirtualBox VM 4.3.0 " in its first line.

[apiening]

Hi Ramshankar,

thank you for the hint. I've attached the complete log of VBox 4.3.0 trying to start a Linux guest.
The log is pretty long, I hope it doesn't contain any sensitive data.
However I don't exactly understand what the error is: The message that it could not take a screenshot is repeated at the end over and over again for whatever reason.

Any idea on that?

Thank you very much,

Andreas Piening

[akiss]

I do have the same situation here, black screen (most of the time) and the beach ball running forever. In some way the keyboard is blocked to and makes a noise when switching between spaces. I was only able to switch with my mouse and the mission control window. Had to kill the VMs.

I'll attach to log files from these VM starts.

Andy

[socratis]

Since the update to 4.3.0 none of my guest would start anymore: I'm left with a black VBox video screen and a rotating beachball... forever.

How long did you wait for? More than 5 minutes? Does it happen at start up? During unning? When closing the VM? I'm asking all of these questions because you're not the only one seeing this behavior. See my original problems here, as well as a report from users jonasbjork and akiss.

@ Ramshankar
Since I saw that you replied to several of these reports, should I open a ticket to see how we can all tackle this?

The funny thing is that as I was trying to gather more evidence, it... worked! I don't know how or why, but I was going back and forth between 4.2.18-88780, 4.3.51-89730 (test build) and 4.3.0-89960 and since my last communication with Ramshankar, 4.3.0 became responsive. I repeat, I did the install/uninstall thingy MANY times and at some point it just worked.

Of course proposing to "install/uninstall-until-it-works" is not a solution. One other thing that I noticed is that after I quit the GUI I have a "VBoxSVC", a "VBoxXPCOMIPCD" and one or two "VBoxNetDHCP" processes that do NOT terminate. Maybe this is part of the problem?

[mpack]

@apiening: The VM name seems to be "PXE boot". What is the guest OS name?

Also, 256MB seems a small amount of memory to give a modern OS, hence the importance of knowing what the OS is.

[apiening]

Thank you all for your response!

@socratis I did wait for several minutes at my second attempt. Can't exactly tell, but I left the VM's running while I was googling for VBox 4.3.0 known problems.
I thought that the problem has something to do with the existing configurations, too. May bee a specific setting or something that is special on my system because I didn't find that much people telling that 4.3.0 does not work for them. However I don't want to dump my configuration neither do I want to install/uninstall VBox because I can't take the risk of loosing my VM's at the moment because I use one of them productive.
Your problem is different than mine because I can't even start my VMs anymore, no matter which I pick.

@mpack The VM is named "PXE boot" because it's just that: A PXE boot configuration with a bridged network setup. Theoretically this can boot up any OS over the network which supports PXE boot. Currently I'm booting a linux system with it. It run's perfectly well with 64 MB of RAM, I just bumped it up to 256 MB because I've done some X benchmarking on this VM the last time I used it. However, the behavior I described is true for every single one of my VM's. This includes but is not limited to Windows XP, Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. All of these machines are running fine with VBox 4.2.18, none is working with 4.3.0. But this is not guest os related, the VM just does not get initialized. Everything I get is the black screen with the beachball if I point the mouse over the window.

Thanks again

Andreas

[Green Lantern]

Having similar problems. Worked all day using VB until I rebooted the system, a Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion. When it came back up apparently the updater had installed 4.3. My Windows guest will no longer start. I get the error: "Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908). Make sure the kernel module has been loaded successfully." Then a window dropped down with a large green arrow on the left with the text, "Creating process for virtual machine "Windows 7" (GUI/Qt) ... (1/2).

I waited but nothing happened. It just hangs there like that. Bummer.

[socratis]

I did the install/uninstall thingy MANY times and at some point it just worked.

I spoke too soon. I just got another couple of spinning wheels with 4.3.0. Bummer...

[greenwapiti]

Had a similar problem and had to drop back to 4.2.18 to have VBox recognize my physical network adapter being present. Here's the rundown.

Stable Win 8 box with VBox 4.2.18 running two guest OSs (64-bit Ubuntu v12.04). Upgraded VBox to 4.3.0. All good so far. Upgraded to Win 8.1, and VMs wouldn't boot. Rebooted host box. No change, but got a kernel module not loaded error message. Guest errors and VM Manager window indicated the Bridged Network was selected, but there were no choices for a physical network adapter to use. Host machine recognized the network adapter just fine, but, guest OSs when booted could not access the network or internet. Attempts to repair and reinstall 4.3.0 did not resolve this problem, and NAT network setting for guests wouldn't help, as there still wasn't any VBox connection to an actual network adapter, so guest OSs still had no network or internet access. Uninstalled 4.3.0 and dropped back to 4.2.18. Network adapter was recognized immediately, guest network settings put back to Bridged with physical network adapter selected, and guest OSs booted with network and internet access.

[Falstaff1141]

I've spent many hours trying to get VB running on either Fedora or CentOS; I'm now at the point where I have finally successfully? installed VB 4.3 with all required packages, but when I attempt to start a guest (Whonix-Gateway) it just hangs forever on "Creating process for virtual machine...(GUI/Qt)...(1/2)" I've shut down the processes, rebooted the CentOS host (6.4) and here I hang, with the spinning wheel, cue up Blood, Sweat and Tears now.

Any thoughts?

[mpack]

Don't hijack: and ask your question in the correct forum, e.g. it doesn't sound like you have an OS X host.

[apiening]

I should mention that I have installed VB 4.3.0 on another machine on a fresh install of OSX Mavericks. I just copied the disk images over and recreated the VB configuration for the VMs. What I want to say is: I've been starting over with a new VB profile, not one which has been created with a prior version and upgraded later on.

However I still was not able to get the current version of VB running on the other system. And even on the new system (which is even faster) the VM seems somehow lagging and less responsive than before. Sometimes I get beachballs for several seconds for no reason (at least there wasn't any load on the host). But this may be another issue.
I never had a problem like this with VB, ever. I hope oracle does not reduce the effort in developing and improving VB since the project has been taken over from Sun.

[socratis]

... seems somehow ... Sometimes ...

It's nice to see the reminder ignored.