virtualbox.org

Until yesterday I was able to run VirtualBox on my Win 7 laptop without any problems. Yesterday morning I started experiencing failures with every attempt to start any of my previously working VMs. The reported error is supR3HardNtChildWaitFor with the message "Timed out after 60001 ms waiting for child request #1 (CloseEvents)." In conjunction with this failure I've noticed in TaskManager that after closing down VirtualBox there remain at least two VirtualBox processes running. All attempts to kill those processes manually also fail. When subsequently trying to shutdown my computer it goes into perpetual wait on the SHUTTING DOWN... display, presumably while waiting for those errant processes to exit.

I've read the similar posts regarding supR3HardNtChildWaitFor and potential problems relating to recent Windows Security patches, however, those patches are not listed as having been applied to my computer and there have been no other updates or new installations applied to my computer since 12/22/2014. While initially troubleshooting this problem I did discover that I had inadvertently allowed my C:\ drive to become full (my VMs were stored in C:\Virtual VMs). However, even after clearing out 40G of space, the problem persists (my VMs are constrained to 20G). Likewise, completely removing all VMs and files, uninstalling/reinstalling VirtualBox, and even trying older versions has not solved my problem.

Any suggestions for what to try next would be appreciated.

MyNewNickName wrote:I've read the similar posts regarding supR3HardNtChildWaitFor and potential problems relating to recent Windows Security patches, however, those patches are not listed as having been applied to my computer and there have been no other updates or new installations applied to my computer since 12/22/2014.

Take a look at the discussion: Windows 4.3.20 specifically for errors due to security. You might find some newer test builds and/or other helpful hints. Here is one hint; it's not just that KB that a lot of people have been sidetracked by. It's a lot of things (antivirus, firewalls, debuggers, emulators, theme changers, etc). Here's another hint; try VirtualBox 4.3.12.

There is an existing topic for this discussion (Socratis provided a link). Please post about this there.