VirtualBox 5.0 Quit Working With Windows Clients

[OldeFoxx]

I have 5 installs if VirtualBox 5.0 on Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.10 distros. At some point, a new release of 5.0 quit working with Win2k, WinXP, and Win7. The errors were different for each, but consistent from one partition to the next. A download of 5.0 and anf effort at upgrade was no help.

I just downloaded a test build from virtualbox.org. was a shell script. It did not arrive flagged as execute. I changed that, but it failed to run in terminal mode from the desktop. I mean a terminal window flashed then closed. I opened a terminal window and started it from there. It reported my current install was corrupt. Actually it could be three things, but the corrup was most likely. It recommended I uninstall the present version before continuing.

There are at least two ways to uninstall a package: Sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-5.0, or use Ubuntu Software Center and search for oracle virtualbox 5,0 and remove it there. The first way is more informative, but it is not GUI. The second way works, but you have to wait for the arrows to quit turning, for it to say it is removed, and you may miss seeing a message box pop up in the background to tell you sinwrhing like "You have to close the package first you dunkhead!"

My words, not the actual message that appeared when I realized the remove had stalled and looked for a cause. Get usw to usinf sudo apt-get for upgrade, dist-upgrade, autoremove, and as a check use install -f, and for a screwed up install, use this command to try and recover: Sudo dpkg --configure -a.

The problem is, the newest test build does not work either. But there are four 64-bit builds to choose from. How do I know which one to get? And if you grab a test build, it might make sense to get a new expansion pack and guest add-in iso as well. Adter all, if a build changes, the others might be impacted. Not everyone would think of or know how to do that.

I'm focused on getting Windows 7 going again first. It fails to start, and the boot rebuild process it goes through fails. The effort to try to boot in up normally gets a blue screen of death, and that disappears immediately as it goes into the boot rebuild process on its own. It fails, and all it does then is give you choice of finding a possible solution of canceling. It finds no solution. No real clues as to the cause.

I may try to revert to 4.9 in a test build. BuI t decided to report the problem and see if it's common or if there is a solution in the works. The test build even suggested that I could have gotten the "corrupt" version of 5.0 from a different site or by a different process. Well, I use Software Updater and the repositories for Ubuntu, so I don;t know what the story is. Tell me what to look for and I will try to help. Virtualbox has been a great tool to work with. I don't revert to Windows much, but keep these versions as a means of checking my answers in helping others who stick with it. And I intend to use it more as I build new VDIs, one for getting use to Android, so that I can be ready to work with those with tablets.

That's all I have for now. I might have missed another post on this same issue, but the fact is, I haven't the time to keep going down different paths looking for something that may or not be there. Tje fact that the most recent test build fails to work tells me something. What it tells me is not much, except the problem hasn't been fixed. I know it is not fixed, now you know it is not fixed. Maybe that is progress. Maybe not. I'm oldefoxx at the famous cox period com if you want to keep me informed, or need more details. I've been using these three clients for several years, and this is the first serious breakdown breakdown for any of them. That it happend all at once can't be a coincidence. That is is persisting from one release of Virtualbox to thr next can't be a coincidence. You must be trying to tell us something if it is intentional. If so, what is it? I'm grown, I can take it. You want me to find a different VM Manager maybe? I could I suppose, but I would hate to have to.

[JHB]

I installed Virtualbox 5.0.8 on Opensuse 13.1.
It would run fine for a while, but then the Windows XP VM sound would disappear, and you had to power it off and on again.
I upgraded to Virtualbox 5.0.14, and now the Windows XP aborts after running for a few minutes.

[OldeFoxx]

My Impression is that Ubuntu 15.10 is not as stable as 14.04 was. Although I think I ran into this specific problem when Virtualbox 5.0 came out. Some of the other distros of Uubuntu (namely Mint) are sticking with 14.04 until 16.04 or later comes out, or that is at least the impression I get. Distribution 15.10 did away with some of the things I liked in 14.04 as well, but as it is reaching the end of its planned life in August, some of the support is dropping away already. I mean, in an open source environment, it's pretty much all volunteer effort anyway, and you get to a point and feel you have either done enough, or further effort is not warranted.

What I don't like about Virtualbox now is not just that it is no longer compatible with pre-installs of Windows, but that it is still 32-bit, not 64-bit as well. What's
the point of that? I have PCs over 10 years old, and they are tired enough to be retired, and they are all 64-bit. When is the last time you had your hands on a 32-bit PC? Since 64-bit is backwards compatible with 32-bit, it should all be moving to 64-bit now.

I'm having to drop Virtualbox and move to Wine, which is moving closer and faster to 64-bit now. The only fairly decent releases of Windows that have been put out are XP and Win7. But XP is gone, while Win7 lingers because Win8 and Win10 are so bad. It's junk software designed for three things in order to make sales: Glitz, Games, and to provide a platform for OSMs ( Original Software Makers) where they can use the same planned obsolesence that Bill Gates deliberately designed into his products. Software doesn't wear out, but hardware does, and Microsoft worked a deal with Intel to sell into the same market over and over, delaying development on the software end until the next major relase, which had to be tied to the need for a new platform to run it on.

What was pushed was looks and media over function. It got harder to do any meaningful work with Microsoft products because of all the bells and whistles that crowded in on top of the initial utility of things like Microsoft Office Suite. You don't need those things, but they convinced everybody that they wanted them, then dropped support for older versions to scare or force you into paying for upgrades.

Then in moving from NT/2K to XP, they added layers of certification, verification, and activation that not only limited deployment to one or possibly 3 PCs, but meant you could not create a limited version that would run from a CD or later DVD drive, what is known in the Linux community as a LiveCD or LIveUSB which you can take anywhere and use to boot up almost any PC.

Compared to Windows, the power, speed, security, and utility of Linux is incredible. It is not only "pay for yours" verses "free for all", but the difference between corporate top-down planning and secrets, and individual bottom-up innovation and creation. It's the difference between a few profit-motivated people that use legalities to hold on to their gains, and an open society where everybody does as they see fit and when they choose. Politically, it is the difference between Socialism with its 1-party rule over everybody, and Democracy where you always have choice. It is also the difference between what a few can achieve in secret, and what the many can do on their own if they share ideas and efforts.

I find little to like or respect about Windows or other Microsoft products. FAT16 and FAT32 were primitive efforts to create partitions, folders, and files, totally unsecure and difficult to trace when things went bad. Delete was a bit flip, and undelete was guessing what had changed. Drives were destroyed or hours spent overwriting them to really get rid of their contents. NTFS was suppose to add journalling to help, but the only real tool available to help was Chkdsk, which was okay in some respects, but unable to really cope with more severe problems. Scandisk was offered at one point as an alternative, and it was indeed more informative, but proved less capable to Chkdsk, and was dropped. RAID drive configurations and off PC/server management served to deal with drive limitations as their contents were made redundant.

There are many formats with Linux and many tools offered, and while you may have to struggle with things like a bad partition tabel or bad sectors, your chances of getting most of your lost data back are much higher. Since you can deploy linux repeatedly, your backups can be multi-PCs, multi-drives, multi-partition, and multi-media. You just use a free tool like rsync to keep the key ones in sync. Several PCs made redundant in a peer-to-peer (p2p) relationship can be a more cost effective solution than having to add more drives in RAID clusters.

I still see a limited use for Virtualbox, but it needs to get odd its bent to make virtual drive cloning a bad thing. It can work around Microsoft by supporting alternative efforts like Wine that port Windows functionality over where possible. No more users having to acquire Windows on their own and get it installed at their\own volition and questions of legalities, but pre-built Linux distros with Wine 32/64 already present to which they can go to for Windows compatibility.

People don't realize it, but Microsoft is on its way out. Like IBM and others, it overplayed its hand. Google came out with on-line apps that cut into Micosoft Office Suiter sales and rendered Windows a non essential, then introduced Android for the lower market in hand-helds and tablets. These are all free, and there is a much smaller market for Windows to dominate. Desktops and laptops are going into storage for many people because they have become overkill in a saturated market. Why a bulky PC that lacks what even hand-helds provide in terms of one or two webcams, a SD or MicroSD card slot, a HDML port, a separate Bluetooth keyboard/mouse/trackpad (all optional), a built-in WiFi connections, plus cellphone, and even a MicroUSB port, and the USBs are 3.0? Plus, since they do not use drives and have limited RAM, their battery lives are very long, like ten to 12 hours. If you need the drive storage, speed, RAM, and backwards compatibility, you may stick with PCs. But its not the main game in town anymore.

Microsoft of course introduced the the Surface and Surface Pro. Though heavily pushed in ads, they results are about what you might expect. Why would someone go top dollar when the real bargains are below, and why would they care to run versions of its other products when more in-demand apps can be had for free from the Google Web Store? All you need is the free Android OS. MacOS is the only rival to Android to speak of, and there are versions of Android out there to replace the MacOS on some Apple products, in case you want more free apps. But there are a number of free apps becoming available for the MacOS as well.

Looking for a suitable hand-held or tablet for my youngest son, I was struck by the fact that the Surface and Surface Pro offerings from Microsoft did not even make the top 100 picks among tablets. The critics, reviewers, and sellers were ignoring them. I could see the point of that. All Microsoft has achieved in retaliation against Google is a small win with Bing. Currently better doer some kinds if searches over the Google search engine, it only wins on being more consistent in its syntax, having more spiders and crawlers in action, and then they spoil it by limiting you to ten search terms and live you a small box to type it all into. To make it even worse, they go for the images and videos hard, stillbelieving that the picture is everything.

Real knowledge is in what comes across as concepts, and these involve words, preferably written words, so that they can be studied and used again and again. Real knowledge of ancient Egypt did not begin to come to light until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a single document that was carved into the sides of a single large stone so that the mystery of a dead written language could be read again. Google offers language translation, spelling correction, and geographical support, in that if you enter your 5-digit zip code first, it knows you want results based on proximity to your location. People like and trust Google because it does what people want and need better. They stick with it as a result. For what I want, it is usually my first choice too. But I will use Bing if Google fails me.

An example where Bing beats Google hands down is try to find PI to a thousand or million places with each one. Or try to conduct a search for an ink jet printer, but exclude ink cartridge sales by using -bulk -pack -cyan -yellow -magenta. Google has passed control of the search engine query process into incompetent hands, which strips off the punctuation. so not only will you get what you didn't want, but it will crowd the leading links returned as it will get the most matches. If and when Google recognizes this, I expect the problem to be fixed. But not having enough spiders and crawlers or hitting enough sites? I don't know if they can catch up.

As to using the NOT or -, this is not beneficial in comparitive shopping where items of like features may appear together. This is because only Bing tries to handle associations of one word to another with its near:# parameter, where # can be any positive integer. I could search for john near:2 doe, meaning I should get a match on "John Doe", or "Doe, John", or even "John K. Doe", or even "Paul Johnson does not live here any more", but not on something like "John & Jane Doe Guide to Money & Investing • Getting it Together Financially in the Prime of Life". And Bing gets it wrong if you try to use near:# in a NOT (john near:2 doe) search, because it will include all references to the John Doe TV Series in the results.

Either you know how to do queries or you don't, and I am speaking from the programming side. Third party search engines can ride the coatails of the giants, drop all negatives as they become false positives, pool the leader links from eack, eliminate duplicates, then go through the remaining links and filter out the ones that match one or more of the original negatives. But again, it needs to be on a proximity bases. The near:# needs to become more definitive, like where an elongated wersion might look like near:10w for words or near"=:10ww meaning ten whole words. or it could be near:3s meaning three sentances, near:7l or seven non-blank lines, or near:2p meaning two parasgraphs.

Paragraphs are defined by one or more blank lines between blocks of single lines or continuous text, as well as by headers in documents in special files like DOC, RTF, and PDF, HTM/HTML AND XML are a few of the many file extensions to denote a file's internal structure These happen to allow for font typed and size to be used with regular, bold, italic, underscore, and possibly strike-throughs to be used with the text. Some allow for superscripts and subscripts as well. And they can recognize headers, all devices to make the text more ledgeable. Some even allow colored foregrounds and backgrounds as attention getters.

While the requester cannot really anticipate what document types need to be searched, the spiders and crawlers could be made able to recognize addociations as being near or far, and perhaps by how much. That migjt make the search more efficient on a first try. Otherwise, you may decide to keep repeating the search in numerous ways using different terms in different orders until you get the results you were looking for.

Two other search elements need to be included: The date and time the searched document was last modified, and ranges, such as $40-$135 if shopping for an ink printer, or 8"-12" if shopping for a tablet and specifying a screen size.. No search engine seems to allow you to use the double quote in the query itself, only to group terms in the order they should appear in. Thus near:2 finds "Doe, John", but "John Doe" does not. The screen size of 8"-12" would exclude 7" tablets and under or even a 12.1" screem. unless fractions are rounded off, but it should allow 8.9" and 10.1" matches if done right. It's possible that you could enter (8-in OR 8 in OR 8" OR 8 ")-(12-in OR 12 in OR 12" OR 12 ") to meet most variations, but these would not work now in any form, as they need a range concept that the connecting "-" infers. You can do (8.9 | 9.4 | 9.7 |10 |10.1 | 11.6 | 12.1) and pick up a small range, but trying to do the same on $40-$135 would involve too many small steps.

If you could use wild cards in searches, you could simplfy matters a bit. For instance as a place holder, where you could search for "$"(4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13)?"." would actually range from $40. to $139.99, which is not too wide of the mark.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share. Never know who is going to read and pick up on these possibilities. Might be a future in their for someone. Look ar what primitive search engines did for Yahoo!, Google, and to a lesser extent, to Microsoft. One of the few sectors of internet functions where ad money really comes into play. Not everyone visits a large number of sites, but everyone in the know uses search engines.