Windows 7 Guest stuck at "Starting Windows" phase.

[Rapid]

Hello,

I am working on creating a Windows 7 gaming VM with PCIe passthrough for my Ubuntu 14.04 main PC. I have checked my hardware and confirmed that it is indeed capable of passing a PCIe card through to the VM (also verified in host terminal and VM log).

The problem I have run into is that when starting my Windows 7 VM it completes the "Windows is loading files..." without issue, before moving to the "Starting Windows" screen for a few seconds. After 2-3 seconds on this screen the VM freezes and enters the Guru Meditation mode.

From the log file (see attachment) it appears that there is a RAM memory issue, however the VM has 6GB of RAM allotted to it (out of 32GB of total ram for the host). I am not sure how to resolve this issue or what exactly is causing it. If anyone has some insight that might help me fix this I would appreciate it. This is my first time working with VMs in Virtualbox (I have set up a few pre-made Windows VMs in VMware workstation, but that's about it).

Specifications:
Host OS:
Ubuntu 14.04
i7-4790K
R9 270x (PCIe 1)

Guest OS:
Windows 7 32-bit (note, this will eventually be changed to a 64-bit)
Gigabyte GTX 1070 (8GB) (PCIe 2)
6GB of RAM allotted (will be upgraded to 18GB once I get the 64-bit OS)

EDIT: (Just noticed I posted this in the wrong forum. Is there a way to move posts to the correct forum?) Thanks Perryg.

[Perryg]

Moved to Windows guest

[socratis]

This is my first time working with VMs in Virtualbox

First time in VirtualBox, first post, yet you embark to a journey that only very few chosen ones have ever completed. Brave you are young Jedi...

Now, a couple of things to get us started:

• As I said, PCI pass-through is a tough nut, and, as far as I know, very few people that have done it so far. Only one that hangs around here (and that was just to see if it could be done). That person is highly skilled and experienced on the intricacies of Linux and VirtualBox, creating their own custom distro and building VirtualBox directly from SVN. Just to show you that this is not for your average Joe. Having said that, if you can follow the instructions, it could be doable.
• A really important thing: you are using the Ubuntu fork of VirtualBox, and a rather old one if I may say so. From the log it is identified as: "VirtualBox VM 4.3.36_Ubuntu r105129". Please uninstall it and download the official one from the Linux Downloads at the VirtualBox website. Otherwise, this discussion is going to be really, really short. BTW, one of the tickets/bugs (#10619) that have the same error as you, was closed because of this very reason.
• You mentioned that you want to build a gaming VM. I will assume that the PCI pass-through is meant for your graphics card, not your joystick controller or your audio card. That would be your second, free and available graphics card, right? Because you definitely cannot use the one that your host is using. There is no such thing as a shared, direct access to a PCI card.
• Your error (VERR_PGM_PHYS_PAGE_RESERVED) is a rather rare one. Most of the instances were due to running the Itanium installation media, one (as I said) was due to the different compiler flags of a fork distro, and the rest seemed one offs. I would start by installing the official VirtualBox distribution, and we take it from there.
• Finally, a friendly advice; don't keep your hopes too high. There are not that many people that can help you with this, myself including, if something goes wrong. I can give you general directions for example. If it doesn't work, I'm already out of ideas.

[scottgus1]

One other itty-bitty-little thing which might have a hair's chance of influencing, and may have nothing to do with the issue at all: Windows 7 32-bit can only access 4GB ram max, and anything above is wasted. On such an unusual quest anything may have an effect.

[Rapid]

Hello,

Just updated to the latest version of Virtualbox, everything starts up fine now.

Thanks for the help.