How to find the cause of Host freezes?

[pepak]

Hi! I am having serious trouble with the newest versions of VirtualBox (Windows 7 x64 host, Windows and Linux guests): If I stick to VirtualBox 4.3.10, all my machines work perfectly, but with newer versions (certainly 4.3.16, 18 and 20, not sure about 12 and 14), my host system freezes after starting any of my virtual machines. I am not certain about the precise moment of the freeze, it occurs either at or immediately after the guest BIOS screen. I am looking for ways of discovering the cause. I am not getting a crashdump, because the system doesn't actually crash, it just freezes some parts of the host system - e.g. mouse cursor won't move, keyboard's Numlock light won't change, but I am able to ping that system for a while before that stops, too. I checked the Known incompatibilities with 3rd party drivers and I do indeed have one incompatible driver installed (Shrewsoft VPN client), but I hesitate to consider it the actual cause as the driver incompatiblity has been reported for VirtualBox 3.2 and the driver has certainly worked fine for me since VirtualBox 4.0. Is there a way to activate detailed VirtualBox logs so that I could check where exactly in the lifetime of virtual machine the freezing occurs?

A sample .vbox file from a machine which works fine in 4.3.10 but freezes the host system in 4.3.20 is attached (renamed to .txt).

Thanks for any pointers.

[socratis]

- Post the guest logs, incomplete as they may be. Also the VBoxStartup.log. Zip them first.
- Take a look at the discussion: Windows 4.3.20 specifically for errors due to security. You may be facing a similar problem that exhibits different symptoms. But we'll know as soon as we take a look at the logs.

[pepak]

Thank you, socratis. I did as you said (after backing up my system drive), and it does indeed look like the error might be related to the topic you have posted, even though I do not have the problematic KB3004394 installed. But the VBoxStartup.log certainly seems to suggest a problem in supR3HardenedSomething functions, as seen by other users. The difference is, I don't get an error message (not in 10 minutes, anyway), but rather a freeze of the whole Host, even before any VBox.log files get created (I thought, when posting the original question, that at least the VM window opened, but apparently not). The relevant logs are attached. I also have the VBox.log files for the (working) VirtualBox 4.3.10, if they are of any use; I don't have any for 4.3.20, because none got created.

I will now go read the linked article in more detail.

Edit: I just wanted to add, I think it likely it's not a problem in some particular recent Windows patch, because I tried VirtualBox 4.3.20 on an year-old backup of my system and it still crashes.

[pepak]

Yep, confirmed: Even after installing KB3024777 and disabling the firewall (Jetico Personal Firewall 2) I am getting the same freezing behavior as before. Log file attached just in case, but looks the same as the previous one to me (except that I wasn't patient enough to wait after the mouse cursor halted).

[pepak]

I did some more testing. But even after reading the whole Windows 4.3.20 specifically for errors due to security, trying everything suggested there, with fully upgraded Windows (all available patches to date, except for KB3004394), no firewall, no antivirus, no anything which could possibly interfere with Virtual Box, and after waiting for 20 minutes for the VM to start, I am not getting anywhere. I am still receiving supR3HardenedScreenImage/NtCreateSection: cache hit (Unknown Status 22900 (0x5974)) on \Device\HarddiskVolume4\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll [lacks WinVerifyTrust], even though KB3004394 has never been installed on this machine, and VB still hangs after twin Timed out after 60001 ms waiting for child request #1 (CloseEvents). It seems I will have to keep using VB 4.3.10 as long as possible, because I am not able to get the new security hardened VB to work and apparently the security hardening is there to stay . If anyone has any suggestion as to what else to try, I would appreciate it, but it seems to me I am out of luck with new VB.