Crash/Hang in Vista Business Host

[Jason Piskiel]

Windows Vista Business hangs and becomes completely unresponsive when running a virtual machine (in this case, running Fedora 7) when the wireless radios are powered on. The VM runs normally when the wireless radios are powered off.

I am attaching a zip file containing the log files that are in the [user/.virtualbox/machines/machinename/logs] directory.

[Jason Piskiel]

log files

[chauser]

I observe the same behavior on my x61 tablet. The guest in this case is Ubuntu 7.10 and the freeze occurs after selecting the OS from the Grub menu but before anything beyond Starting up... appears on the console.

Interestingly, I have the same behavior with andLinux -- radio off, no problem; radio on, vista freezes within a second or two of starting andLinux.

[chauser]

I was able to cure this for both andLinux and virtualBox by installing the latest drivers from the Intel website for the 3945ABG wireless card. The version that works is 11.5.0.32. This was not found by vista when I asked it to search the internet for updated drivers. I had to go to the www.intel.com and find the driver zip file to download.

I notice that there are many complaints in various forums about the drivers for this card with some alleging that newer drivers are worse than old. I suggest creating a restore point before installing in case you don't like the new driver. It seems to be working fine for me in <1hr of use.

Replying to chauser:

I observe the same behavior on my x61 tablet. The guest in this case is Ubuntu 7.10 and the freeze occurs after selecting the OS from the Grub menu but before anything beyond Starting up... appears on the console.

Interestingly, I have the same behavior with andLinux -- radio off, no problem; radio on, vista freezes within a second or two of starting andLinux.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Looks like a wireless driver problem according to the comments above. Closing.

[jrave]

I would like to reopen the ticket as I have the same Problem. I tried upgrading my Wireless Driver to Version 12.0.0.82 but it still doesn't work. My Setup is basically the same except that I am working with an 4965AG card. Hopefully there is a solution.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Do you use NAT or host interface networking in the guest? Include your VBox.log here please.

[jrave]

I am using NAT-Networking and included my latest vbox.log . I hope there is some information in there to solve this problem. I am not allowed to attach a file so I posted it there: ​http://pastebin.com/f4e458855

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if this problem persists with VirtualBox 2.2.0.

[chauser]

Replying to frank:

Please reopen if this problem persists with VirtualBox 2.2.0.

Hooray -- I downloaded 2.2.0 and VirtualBox is now usable on my X61 with the wireless turned on. Thanks!

[Sander van Leeuwen]

This was probably fixed in 2.1.4. Thanks for the confirmation.