Guest OS hangs with "Starting virtual machine" when 3D acceleration selected -> Fixed in SVN.

[Tim Keen]

This problem is identical to, and in fact was mentioned in, bug report #2857. However, it appears that thread went the way of suggesting the problem was only related to host networking and was subsequently fixed. That bug (related to version 2.1.0) has been closed and marked resolved. I am currently experiencing and can reproduce this problem under 2.1.4. The host OS is Windows XP, Service Pack 2. The guest OS seems to be irrelevant. I've tried launching Unbuntu, BeOS, FreeDos and Windows vms, and they all seem to launch successfully once, but will hang again and again if 3D acceleration is turned on. Networking can be turned on or off, and it doesn't change the behavior. If I turn off 3D acceleration, however, they launch successfully time and again. I created a new vm, mounted a Windows XP iso and a new, empty vdi, and it launched successfully with 3D turned on, once, after freshly booting the host. However, subsequent launches of the new vm hang. Output of the log is attached.

I can turn networking on or off and it will not launch unless I either (a) reboot the host, or (b) turn off 3D acceleration. I have not tried this using a Linux host.

[Leonid Lobachev]

What's you video card, could you post a log from successfull vm run? Also, could you try updating your host card drivers to the latest version if they ain't yet.

[Tim Keen]

Video card is an NVidia GeForce 7600 GS. Host was recently built and patched, so I think the drivers are current. Driver version is 8.3.9.0 (dated 2/9/2006). Posting log from a successful run of the same vm (note that I simply powered it off after successful boot).

[Leonid Lobachev]

Hrm, I should be more specific, sorry :) Could you please post a log from a successfull vm run with 3d acceleration enabled?

Also, 2/9/2006...doesn't look like a "recent" date, atleast According to NVidia site (​http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_182.06_whql.html) they have much more recent version dated 18/02/2009.

[Remowylliams]

I can attest to this problem as well. Currenlty on XP and Vista 64. What I did find was that unchecking 3D support, the guest OS would start fine. Keeping the VM Manager open closing the guest, checking 3D Support and starting the guest again, it would run fine and operated as expected.

Otherwise just trying to start a guest os with 3D support enabled after starting the VM manager will cause the guest machine to not even post. It just sits and waits for you to kill it unresponsive.

Hope this helps.

[Andrew Kirsanow]

I'm having exactly the same problem. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon 9550 and I've literally just updated to the latest driver version this morning. Still the problem persists. Also, I've tried running the latest DirectX updates from Microsoft to see if that makes any difference and it doesn't.

Actually, if it's helpful, the VM stopped working with 3D support enabled as soon as I took out the previous version of VirtualBox (2.1.2) and installed the 2.1.4 release. 3D support had been OK in 2.1.2 but the machine wouldn't start as soon as I upgraded.

[Leonid Lobachev]

Thanks for infos, fixed in SVN.