Windows XP Guest Hangs on Shut Down

[BJWyler]

Hello. I am running VirtualBox 6.0 on two different systems - one running Windows 7 and the other running Windows 10. I have the same issue occurring on both systems with three different Windows XP guest systems.

On the Win7 Host, I have the PavilionN510 guest, which was a port from Windows 7 Virtual PC, which was originally a physical machine I ported into a VM.
On the Win10 Host, I have a copy of that system, as well as a fresh built Windows XP system that was originally created in Hyper-V.

All three WinXP guests end up hanging once I attempt to shut them down - regardless of whether I send the APCI signal from VirtualBox or I do the shut down from within the guest itself. In the case of the Win7 host, I received an error message. On Win10 host, no error message and I am forced to shut the systems down via the console. I have attached the info as indicated in the error message. Please let me know if there are other details that will be helpful. This is the first time I have used VirtualBox, so am still getting the hang of it.

[scottgus1]

Actually that's 6.1.6 on Windows 7:

00:00:01.765020 VirtualBox VM 6.1.6 r137129 win.amd64 (Apr 9 2020 19:01:29) release log
00:00:01.765024 Log opened 2020-05-06T22:14:12.672234900Z
00:00:01.765025 Build Type: release
00:00:01.765028 OS Product: Windows 7

This XP on 7 guest gurued over VERR_VMX_INVALID_VMXON_PTR which is usually because some other software tried to steal VT-x. What that software is was not shown as I could see.

The 10 host log might help, or the hardening logs.

Both of these guests appear to be made in other hypervisors or multiple P2V's. Try a fresh guest of a new XP install.

[BJWyler]

Thank you. The only thing that I know off the top of my head on the Win7 host would be Virtual PC, but I don't run both at the same time. I have attached the hardening log for the 7 host and both logs for the same guest from the Win10 host to see if that helps. All the machines run fine otherwise, except for the Hyper-V port which has sound problems when I try to run an old game (which doesn't occur on the other vm). It's only when shutting down that there seems to be an issue, but it doesn't seem to negatively affect the guests (yet anyway). I'm just concerned that the XP installations get borked from having to "pull the plug" during the shut down process as the old Windows versions never took kindly to that over time.

[scottgus1]

The hardening logs show exit codes of 0, so no hardening issues on either host. The 10 log shows nothing unusual to me for guest bootup. There is unusual suspending and resuming activity, and something strange going on with the guest's CD drive, but I can't tell if that activity is user-initiated or not. The activity happens over an hour, but the guest continues to run another two hours before it is shut down.

I would suggest trying a fresh XP guest (you can run it 30 days before needing to activate it) and see if that guest has the same issues these old XP guests have.

FWIW the 'vbox.log.1's you have been posting are the second-to-the-last logs. 'vbox.log' without the .# is the most recent log.

[BJWyler]

The disc drive stuff may be from not having it set as passthrough at the time. Thanks for the help. I'll have to dig out an old XP install disc to play with. So far I haven't had any problems from it, and it still boots fine every time, so the VM doesn't seem to detect a hard shut down. So I may just have to roll with it.