Guest crashes when running Visual Studio

[kazlicious]

HI there...

Whenever I open a visual studio project on my Virtual Box guest VM, it crashes out into the Guru Mediation. This has begun occurring since I upgraded to the newest available Virtual Box Version 5.2.6 r 120293 (QT5.6.2)

After reviewing the logs, I suspect a hardening Error as this is what appears just prior to the Guru Meditation state starting:

00:08:16.710035 supR3HardenedErrorV: supR3HardenedScreenImage/LdrLoadDll: cached rc=VERR_LDRVI_NOT_SIGNED fImage=1 fProtect=0x0 fAccess=0x0 cHits=32768 \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\HydraVision\HydraDMH64.dll

00:08:16.710111 supR3HardenedErrorV: supR3HardenedMonitor_LdrLoadDll: rejecting 'C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\HydraVision\HydraDMH64.dll' (C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies\HydraVision\HydraDMH64.dll): rcNt=0xc0000190

00:11:13.961664 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'GURU_MEDITATION'


One thing I that concerns me is that my Host OS is running WIndows 10 x64, but my guest is running WIndows 10 x86. The error appears to be attempting to access the x64 version of the display driver, even though my guest OS is x86. Would this be causing Virtual Box to crash unexpectedly? If so... how to I get my guest VM to be accessing the correct driver on my Host OS? And why does this only happen when I open up Visual Studio 2013?

I have attached the full VBox.log file for review. Any comennts or suggestions are GREATLY appreciated!

--kaz

[mpack]

I assume that's an error in the host OpenGL drivers, due to 3D acceleration being enabled in the guest. It would mean that one or more host graphics DLLs is not signed.

I see that the actual module which crash is HydraVision. Do you actually need that to be running? If yes then check the digital signatures in the DLL referenced in the error, and ask ATI for a solution. They should definitely be signing all driver DLLs.

The 32bit/64bit question is a red herring. Your host is 64bit, therefore VirtualBox is installed as a 64bit app, therefore it uses the 64bit host API. It doesn't matter what the guest is.

[kazlicious]

Thank you for the quick reply! I have 3D Acceleration and 2D Video Acceleration both disabled in the Settings for my guest VM. (See attached .jpg of my Display settings)

Do I need to disable 3D Acceleration in the OS somewhere too?

[mpack]

Do I need to disable 3D Acceleration in the OS somewhere too?

No, you don't. The guest can only access features made available to it in the settings, so the guest has nothing to disable.

That it was related to 3D acceleration was only a guess, but it's definitely graphics related. In fact the module which crashed is from ATI HydraVision, which apparantly has something to do with nicer multi monitor management on the host. I have no idea why HydraVision is required, and why it has to inject a DLL into the guest, but apparantly it does. Rejection of that (unsigned DLL driver) is what leads to the crash. As I said previously you need to verify the signature on the named DLL, and perhaps approach ATI for an updated driver that is properly signed.

[kazlicious]

Thank you for the input and the ideas. I tried completely uninstalling my video drivers and just going with a generic Microsoft Video driver, but that didn't resolve the problem. I found it odd, though, the Virtual Box was only crashing when I started Visual Studio 2013, so I decided to investigate that a bit.

I found that when I start Visual Studio with the 'Run As Administrator' option, it works fine... but when I run the program regular, it crashes Virtual Box. This just began happening since I upgraded to Virtual Box 5.2.6 r120293 with the associated Guest Additions for this version. So, I suspect something in the most recent release of virtual box may be negatively affecting this. I have been running Visual Studio 2013 in this same VM since VS2013 was originally released and it has always run as expected.

So.. I haven't solved the problem, but I have been able to work around the problem. I'm just posting this solution in case anyone else ever stumbles across this thread.

[socratis]

Can you try and downgrade your Guest Additions to the previous version that was working?

[mpack]

That's very odd. I believe it's the first time I've ever heard of a guest permissions policy affecting the host in any way. I assume that different guest code gets run in the two scenarios, one of which trips over the error, the other doesn't. I can't see how admin rights inside the guest would have any other relevance to the host.

[kazlicious]

That's very odd. I believe it's the first time I've ever heard of a guest permissions policy affecting the host in any way. I assume that different guest code gets run in the two scenarios, one of which trips over the error, the other doesn't. I can't see how admin rights inside the guest would have any other relevance to the host.

It isn't affecting the host at all. When I run Visual Studio in my Guest Virtual Machine without selecting 'Run as Administrator', then the Guest machine crashes. This hasn't had any effect on the host that I can determine.

[kazlicious]

Can you try and downgrade your Guest Additions to the previous version that was working?

I always thought there was a specific version of Guest Additions for a specific version of the Virtual Box Client. If that is not the case, where woudl I find previous versions of the Guest Additions?

And how do I uninstall guest additions so that I can install a previous version?

[mpack]

This hasn't had any effect on the host that I can determine.

A VirtualBox guru mediation is a HOST ERROR, not a guest crash. So "Run as administrator" in the guest is affecting a host outcome as I said.

(Yes, the title of this topic is wrong).

[socratis]

I always thought there was a specific version of Guest Additions for a specific version of the Virtual Box Client.

True. Each VirtualBox version has a specific set of GAs. But you can work with higher/lower version of GAs compared to the main program. The ExtPack is definitely more picky than the GAs; the ExtPack has to match, the GAs, not so much.

If that is not the case, where woudl I find previous versions of the Guest Additions?

You could downgrade your whole VirtualBox installation. But if you specifically want to try just the GAs, start at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/ and pick your version. For each A.B.C version, there is a corresponding "VBoxGuestAdditions_A.B.C.iso". You could just install the GAs on top of the old ones, or even better, uninstall the current ones from the Add/Remove Programs and install the "new" ones.