XP guest hangs on reboot esp. after MS Updates

[scottgus1bug]

I have had XP guests sometimes hang when doing a Windows-Update-invoked reboot. Both XP and 7 hosts, different versions of Virtualbox.

The guests get to just before the VM window would shrink to 640x480. They stop responding, no disk or network activity, just XP's peacefully-running light blue (not BSOD blue) background. If I pause/unpause or save-state/restart the VM window turns black and gets a grid of lines filling half the window. The VM does nothing else and I have to reset it. Then it boots up normally.

Two XP guests sometimes exhibit this behavior for now. I used to have this problem in a third guest, but it hasn't shown itself for a long while, despite still getting the same Windows updates as the two present offenders.

I have searched and found references to audio being the culprit (one guest has audio, one used to but does not now). Also, "absolute pointer" has been fingered, but I never use that setting and neither guest has ever had it turned on.

The attached zipped logs refer to these VMs:

XP guest: "XPnet"; XP host, audio on, no absolute pointer, VB version 3.1.2 (this one runs all the time with no scheduled reboots, I think all the logs in the zip are from Windows-Update-induced hanged reboots)

XP guest: "Email Tester" Windows 7 host, audio used to be on but now disabled in VM settings, no absolute pointer, VB version 4.0.16 (this one is shut down by a host-induced Vboxmanage command every night; only the most recent log was a Windows-update-induced hanged reboot, the earlier logs should be normal shutdowns. I've also had this VM running on version 3.2.12 on a different Windows 7 host, with the same behavior)

The third guest "Antispam" (same host as "Email Tester") that used to have this problem also was XP, audio on, no absolute pointer. Audio is still on. It just had a Windows Update same time as the other two, but did not hang during reboot. The attached log is this VM's last Windows-Update-successful-reboot log for reference.

Guest Additions are current in each VM. I have not seen if other causes for in-guest-invoked reboots cause hanging, and I haven't had the hang happen when I tell the guest to reboot from the guest's Start menu or a "Shutdown -r". It seems that Windows Update is the only rebooter that causes this to happen that I've noticed so far. And I've not experienced Windows Update having a problem rebooting the physical XP PCs I have at home.

[scottgus1bug]

XPnet logs

[scottgus1bug]

Email tester logs

[scottgus1bug]

Antispam log

[scottgus1bug]

I am propably not going to be able to switch versions of Virtualbox on the hosts. I was hoping someone could tell me if there is a tell-tale setting in the VMs that causes this...

[mTi3Ad9vN]

I've also seen XP SP2 VMs hang on shutdown many times.

[scottgus1bug]

The hang after Windows Update happened again last night. The attached zip (Antispam-2012-07-10.zip) has three logs, two(7-8 and 7-9) were good shutdowns, the last (7-10) was the hang after Windows Update.

[scottgus1bug]

Sorry, added 2012-7-10.zip attachment twice by accident...

[Frank Mehnert]

This bug might be already fixed in the recent 4.1 releases, I would suggest you to try 4.1.18.

[scottgus1bug]

Thanks, Frank, I'll take a look into that, but I was wondering if you or someone could give some thought as to what was causing the bug? (I may not be able to change versions of Virtualbox on the hosts.)

[Frank Mehnert]

Sorry, I cannot tell you a specific reason. I only remember that there were several fixes in the 4.1.x releases which could be related.