virtualbox.org

HI all, would greatly appreciate any help with my situation.

I have Linux Mint 17.1 host and Virtualbox 4.3.28 installed with a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit guest OS installed. Once or twice per day, Windows spontaneously reboots, causing me to lose anything I was in the midst of working on. I did some google searches and looked on this forum and I was not able to find any guidance. I had this problem on my previous linux mint system but I did a clean install of 17.1 (from linux mint 14), a new install of Virtualbox, and a new install of Windows 7, and I still have the same issue. This is the latest error message I received:
What can I try to resolve this? Many thanks!!

Did I post this in the wrong forum? Any suggestions? Windows continues to reboot spontanetously.

No the location is probably correct it is just there is nothing to use for diagnostics. Just after the next crash post the guests log file ( as an attachment )

Has crashed 2 more times. Is the log file you are referring to the Windows minidump file? I tried to copy it to attach it here and it does not allow me to do so, stating "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file" I tried to change the administrator permissions but it still gives the same message (not entirely sure I edited the permissions properly).

Is there another file you are referring to or else can you give some instructions on how I can copy it?

After the next crash, you right click on the guest in the main manager and then click show log. Save and post as an attachment.

Thanks, I found the file and uploaded it as an attachment. It continues to crash for no discernable reason. Let me know if this is the right file.

Try reducing the number of CPUs for the guest to one. Your CPU only has two cores.

Let me make sure I understand this properly. My main OS is linux (which I think is called the host). In linux I installed virtualbox and then I run an OS through virtualbox which is Windows 7 Professional, which is also called the guest. It is the guest that is crashing. So isn't assigning fewer CPUs to the guest giving it less resources and making it more likely it will crash?

To clarify, it seems that the rebooting problem is within Windows because the host system is not affected.

@wvvis,
Did you reduce the processors to one and test this?

I reduced the processors to one but haven't used it yet to test it, will post what happens.

I just don't understand how reducing the resources to windows could cause it to work better?

I get the message that there is an update to virtualbox, is it recommended that I update it each time? Will have to look into how to do it in linux mint.

the short answer to your question is, if you assign both cores to your guest, what is the host going to use which is running the guest in VirtualBox after all. The host and the guest will fight for control of the CPU to the detriment of both.

Got it, that makes sense!

Before I changed the cores to 1 I had a critical error and Windows wouldn't start, it said to post the log file online which I am attaching to this message. Windows system repair is running now, I am going to let it finish (per this post https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 554?page=3 sometimes it ran for hours to even days but ppl reported things working much better afterward if they let it finish instead of interrupting it, although I wasn't using windows vista and am doing it through virtualbox), but if the problem was the number of cores then this log might be moot so I will wait until it is finished running and test it before reporting back here.

Also I do not have much free space on my host, I have 2 systems in virtualbox, one of them I will delete shortly which will free a lot of space, I don't know if this could be contributing as well.

It finished running the system repair without apparent issues. Switched to 1 core and continues to crash unexpectedly. Attaching the latest log. Maybe there is some sort of hardware incompatibility with windows guest? Should I try updating virtualbox, I guess a new version came out recently?

If this is the log from when the last crash occurred it doesn't show any problem. I would set the the Windows guest to not reboot on error and see what the crash error says. You can also look at the report generated in the guest to see why.