VM not powering on Yosemite 10.10.1

[heateris]

Mac mini (Mid 2010) - 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

I tried using VirtualBox for the first time in about two years. VB started fine but when i powered on my VM (windows XP) I'm getting this message --

A critical error has occurred while running the virtual machine and the machine execution has been stopped.
For help, please see the Community section on [removed to post} or your support contract. Please provide the contents of the log file VBox.log and the image file VBox.png, which you can find in the /Users/heateris/VirtualBox VMs/windows Xp/Logs directory, as well as a description of what you were doing when this error happened. Note that you can also access the above files by selecting Show Log from the Machine menu of the main VirtualBox window.

After reading this forum, i believe i need to uninstall with the tool, repair disk permissions, and reinstall. will repair disk permissions affect anything else? i figured i would post my files first before moving forward.

BTW I'm using VB V4.1.18. i selected "check for updates" and was told i m using the most recent version. i have a feeling thats not correct. lol

thanks

[loukingjr]

over commitment of RAM…

00:00:00.738 Host RAM: 4096MB RAM, available: 972MB
00:00:00.854 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000061000000 (1 627 389 952, 1 552 MB)

You have 1.5GB assigned to the guest but less than 1GB available from the host.
Try assigning 512MB for the guest.

[heateris]

over commitment of RAM…

00:00:00.738 Host RAM: 4096MB RAM, available: 972MB
00:00:00.854 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000061000000 (1 627 389 952, 1 552 MB)

You have 1.5GB assigned to the guest but less than 1GB available from the host.
Try assigning 512MB for the guest.

ok, didn't make a difference. i ended up DLing the newest version of the VB .dmg, uninstalled my current VB with the tool found in the .dmg, repaired disk permissions, then installed V4.3.20. Windows XP fired right up! i had about 55 Microsoft updates. lol. Only problem now is explorer won't work. i keep getting an error message that it has to close.

[socratis]

ok, didn't make a difference. i ended up DLing the newest version of the VB .dmg

Utterly irrelevant. You simply had more available RAM the 2nd time that you relaunched the VM. Check your logs and see the truth. BTW, it would serve you in the future if you follow loukingjr's advice. Or install a memory monitor.

[heateris]

ok, didn't make a difference. i ended up DLing the newest version of the VB .dmg

Utterly irrelevant. You simply had more available RAM the 2nd time that you relaunched the VM. Check your logs and see the truth. BTW, it would serve you in the future if you follow loukingjr's advice. Or install a memory monitor.

I did follow loukingjr's advice and assigned 512MB for the host. Then when I tried to power on my VM (widows XP), I got the same error message. That lead me to uninstall, repair disk permissions, etc.

[socratis]

What I meant was to have a tool available at all times to check your available RAM. It's a different thing if you have 15 apps running at your host and try to launch the VM (it will fail), vs if you just started your computer and launch the VM (it will work).

What I do is have several monitor tools running at all times. Your preference may vary, but you can use either (I use all of them at the same time ):
- MenuMeters.
- X Resource Graph.
- Memory Monitor.
- Built-in Activity monitor.