virtualbox.org

Host : Win XP
Guest : Win 2K Pro

The Guest VDI file is on a Windows 2003 Server, on an NTFS partition.

I keep getting the “Delayed Write Failed” error. I have read other posts and followed the directions to fix this error, but the causes of –those- errors seems to have been different.

Perhaps I misunderstood one of the corrective actions.

Now, The Win2K guest runs fine for a while… the delayed-write-error happens immediately if I access a network share from the guest OS (Win2KPro). It may happen other times, but accessing a network share will reliably cause the error.

The purpose is to have a semi-portable development environment, so I can get to my development tools from any computer on the LAN. I get the same error using other WinXP hosts on the LAN.

The VDI File works fine if I run it on a local drive.

When the DWF error occurs, the error is reported in both the host –and- guest OS systems.

I run an Ubuntu VM from the same network share on the Win2K3 server with no issues.

I am using Win2K Pro as the guest OS because it is very lean compared to XP, but more importantly, I had an unused Win2K Pro license, but no unused XP licenses. Rather, I have one unused XP license, but it is from a dead OEM PC, and I have pretty much resigned myself to the notion that it is a dead license. Still, Win2K Pro has perhaps half the memory footprint of XP.

In this scenario, I can keep my development environment pristine and predictable (in theory). If my workstation goes “poof” I can keep working on and supporting our critical apps by simply pulling up that preconfigured environment on any other system on the LAN. Also, that VDI file is on hardware RAID 5, and automatically backed up. I also don’t have to put an extra load on any of the servers by using remote desktop technology, which would place a significant memory and CPU load on that server.

This seems a natural fit for VirtualBox… if I can get it to work over a network share…

This helped some, but not not remove the problem...

In teh HOST OS.

Device Manager -> Disk Drives -> VBOX HARDDISK
...Properties...
"Disk Properties" Tab

Uncheck "Write Cache Enabled"

This stablized the system so that it did not -totally- lock up when the error occurs.

However, sometime after accessign a network share using the host OS, hardware errors begin to appear... popup after popup. I was able with effort to get the system to shutdown semi-properly.

This problem has not occurred until I access a shared network resource.

Sometimes I get a paging file error, sometimes a hardware error, sometimes both.

Eliminating the page file did not help... Still got the hardware error after accessignthe network share, and this last time, got an error on THE HOST OS as well... "Delayed Write Failed"

If I can eliminate the write-chase for the HOST OS when accessing a network share, I have some hope that will fix the problem.

I googled a bit and did not find how i coudl do that.

Anybody know offhand how to disable caching when accessing Windows file shares?

i think i'm seeing this on vbox 3 under karmic. In my XP guest it writes to network share and i often see the delayed write cache issue. anyone else see this?