VirtualBox suddenly wont boot guest OS's

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
Post Reply
bugmenot44
Posts: 7
Joined: 20. Jan 2014, 20:55

VirtualBox suddenly wont boot guest OS's

Post by bugmenot44 »

Hi:

I am running VirtualBox version 4.3.10 on an XP SP3 host. The main board is Intel DG965RY and the processor is Intel Core 2 Duo E4400. From whatever information I could gather, both the main board and processor "do not" support virtualization, which I was not aware of previously, but i have been running different guest OS's over the years without any problems, including Mint 13, Mint 16, XP SP2, XP SP3, Win7, to name a few. Currently I have XP SP3, Mint 13 Cinnamon and Mint 16 KDE installed as guests and was running them without any problems for the past few months. I am not sure whether I changed any BIOS setting or did something, but suddenly none of the guests are booting now. It throws up an error as shown in the attached jpeg file. My research shows that it has to do with enabling virtualization in BIOS. Trying to do that was futile, since I cannot find that setting in the BIOS. Official Intel data says board does not support virtualization, but i have been running it for past several years. Please help me get the guests booting again. Thanks to all in advance.
Attachments
Virtual Box Error.JPG
Virtual Box Error.JPG (28.63 KiB) Viewed 902 times
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39134
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: VirtualBox suddenly wont boot guest OS's

Post by mpack »

Please post a VM log file. Remember to zip it before attaching it. See Minimum information needed for assistance.
bugmenot44
Posts: 7
Joined: 20. Jan 2014, 20:55

Re: VirtualBox suddenly wont boot guest OS's

Post by bugmenot44 »

Here are the needed information:

1. VirtualBox VM 4.3.10 r93012 with Guest Additions Installed.
2. Host: 32-Bit Windows XP Professional v 5.1.2600 with Service Pack 3,
Guest: 32-Bit Linux Mint 16 Petra KDE. Dont know about available memory, but this is what I can gather from the log, hope it is the needed info - Available memory 1476MB out of a total of 2029MB.

Log file zipped and attached.
Attachments
Linux Mint 16 KDE-2014-04-22-23-08-31.zip
(984 Bytes) Downloaded 3 times
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39134
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: VirtualBox suddenly wont boot guest OS's

Post by mpack »

Unfortunately the log is closed almost immediately, before much useful information is given. Available memory is indeed low (1476MB), however I can't see whether it's too low because neither you nor the log has revealed how much RAM the VM asks for. Also, the log says nothing about your host's capabilities.

The error message itself suggests to me that a DLL has been lost, corrupted, never installed, or replaced by one from the wrong version of VirtualBox (the DLL version doesn't match the foreground VBox version).

The wording of the message does not suggest (to me) anything to do with hardware virtualization : which incidentally would not be enabled by VirtualBox unless you enabled a feature which required it (e.g. among other things - 64bit guest, >4GB RAM to a guest, >1 CPU core to a guest). If VBox needed VT-x and couldn't enable it then you'd get a specific error message, we see it quite a lot on these forums, and it isn't the error message you're reporting.

I would uninstall and then reinstall VirtualBox, making sure you install for the correct user, but use "Run as administrator" to ensure you have admin rights so drivers get installed.

Also make sure that you don't have any old VirtualBox DLLs or executables on your system path.
Post Reply