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I have a noob question and I can't seem to find the answer by searching. I have an old XP program running on XP SP3 that I am using to print reports from a piece of lab equipment. The program won't run on Win 7 or 8 even in compatibility mode but runs fine on a Win XP SP3 32 bit Guest with VB 4.3.20 on a 32 bit Win 7 host (I cloned my XP SP3 machine using Paragon's Hard Disk Manager 15 for the Guest). The program in question uses dot Net Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. The Guest had all versions of dot Net installed and updated through Windows Update before the cloning.

For logistical reasons I really want to use my Dell Venue 11 Pro running 64 bit Win 8.1 as the host's computer. VB and my 32 bit Win XP SP3 clone run great on it. However, every time I start the program in question, it crashes throwing a mscorwks.dll error because the program's SQL backup service crashes. I have installed all of the dot net updates that MS has, uninstalled and reinstalled the program in the Guest including SQL Server 2005, and tried it using MS's Win "XP Mode" hard drive image as the Guest. Nothing seems to work.

Sorry for the long first post. My question is: What am I missing to make VB, Win XP SP3, and dot Net Framework work together on my 64 bit host when they seem happy on my 32 bit host? The crash error I get is as follows:
ModName mscorwks.dll ModVer 2.0.50727.3655 ModStamp 5266e523 Debug 0 Offset 002efe54

If an single guest application is crashing, it seems to me you should be asking for support from the company that wrote that application. I think you'll be very lucky if anyone here recognizes it. At a wild guess I'd say there's something different about the network interface.

mpack wrote:If an single guest application is crashing, it seems to me you should be asking for support from the company that wrote that application. I think you'll be very lucky if anyone here recognizes it. At a wild guess I'd say there's something different about the network interface.

Thanks for the thoughts. I already did that and they aren't supporting that program anymore. Their "new" software is for their newest equipment and isn't backwards compatible with my $12,000 piece of fully functional equipment! I was hoping this was a settings issue with the 64 bit host that someone else had experienced in another program since the program runs fine on the 32 bit host. It will take some re-cabling but I can make it work with my 32 bit host.

Well at the very least I'd have thought that if you went to the MS forums then you might find other users with similar problems, even if MS themselves no longer offer support. I'm not ruling out a VirtualBox issue, but until we know exactly what the issue is, we can't know what setting change in VirtualBox might fix it.

p.s. Have you considered using dual boot, rather than a VM? Just because your host has 64bit support doesn't mean that you have to install a 64bit OS. Ditto for just getting some cheap PC and discarding the bundled OS.

I have found the answer on the MS forums...it's just not too practical. Apparently the problem is the software in question was written using an earlier version of dot Net. It is now pointing to an invalid .exe. MS suggests decompiling the program, changing the code, then recompiling.

On a more practical note, thanks for the idea on the dual boot. I have multiple machines I already dual boot. The one I want to use is running 8.1 Pro 64 bit which I could dual boot to a 32 bit OS. Unfortunately, dot Net installs itself as part of the OS which is probably why it's giving this program problems when running on a 64 bit host but not on a 32 bit host.

I'm not sure I see how the .net suggestion applies. Do you mean installed in the guest or the host? If you've been moving the same guest image around then any version installed in the guest doesn't change. And I can't see why the .net version installed on the host matters to the guest... why would it assume that some other PC accessible over a network API is running a particular version of .net? And if it did... surely it would do a version check and give a specific error, not just crash?