virtualbox.org

Thanks. I got into 3.1, found the Freecell program and launched it, no crash.
I di dhave to make a new guest to use your vmdk file in the OVA, I couldn't import either through the OVA itself or the extracted OVF. Just a new guest with the disk file & the same settings the OVF called for got a running Windows 3.1 guest, and Freecell works.

Maybe a guest log file after your Freecell guest crashes would help?

whats your operating system? mine is windows 10, how do i do a guest log?

My OS is Windows 7, and I'm still back on Virtualbox 4.2.16, might explain why I'm not getting a crash.
To make a log, right-click the guest in the GUI after the crash, click Show Log. Save the first log as a text file on the desktop, then zip that text file & post it here as an attachment.

I had to actually enable hardware virt on the guest to be able to get this going. Not sure why but I noticed a pagefault error without it. Probably due to the newer hardware.
Oh and I added power.exe to the config.sys to keep it from thrashing the cpu at 100%.

i found the problem, when hardware acceleration is off, it does the error, when its on its fine, i had it off since if you try to install windows 3.1, it crashes the installer when hardware virtualization is enabled

Yep, with VT-x off, Freecell crashes.
Glad you found the issue!

but whats the issue with the windows 3.1 installer crashing when its on?, why doesn't windows 3.1 in vmware crash when it's virtualization is off?

When Windows 3.1 was developed, VT-x didn't exist. It may be just one of those things that has to be remembered when trying to install & run a really old OS on a modern PC, or it may be a glitch. You may wish to tell the developers on the Bugtracker, maybe it's a bug that crept in.

what should i say to them when i tell them? should i say that the virtualization needs to be on when running freecell win32s on windows 3.1, and that if its on the windows 3.1 installer crashes when you install windows 3.1. and how do i tell them on bugtracker?

Before I tell you that, I forgot about the win32s. I did not do anything with a file called win32s. What are you doing with that?

win32s is the win32 program to run 32bit software on windows 3.1, freecell is a 32-bit program

win32s is a subset of the win32 api, so only certain 32-bit programs will work. win32s is not a program itself.

Is win32s launched automatically or do I have to launch it manually? If manual, how to launch?

you can't launch it manually, it only launches when a win32s compatible program is loaded

OK, so when I successfully run Freecell, win32s is running and the test is complete? If so, then the VT-x diagnosis would be correct. You can post on the Bugtracker here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Bugtracker
They will want to see guest logs of failures and successes when installing and when running Freecell. Just try to make the post detailed enough to convey the question to them.

wait i forgot one thing the 32 bit file and disk access, it only happens when that is enabled. why does freecell crash only happen when hardware virtualization is disabled when 32 bit file and disk access is enabled. i had to add that to the bugreport.