WindowsXP VM critical error after setting custom CPUID

[Cristian Ciupitu]

I set a custom CPUID for a Windows XP virtual machine using this script:

vm=jiji
vendor='GenuineIntel'
ascii2hex() { echo -n 0x; od -A n --endian little -t x4 | sed 's/ //g'; }

#leafs='0x00000000 0x80000000' # WindowsXP freezes after the safe mode menu
leafs='0x00000000'             # VBox fails
for leaf in $leafs; do
	eax=$leaf  # '0x00000000'
	ebx=`echo -n "${vendor:0:4}" | ascii2hex`
	edx=`echo -n "${vendor:4:4}" | ascii2hex`
	ecx=`echo -n "${vendor:8:4}" | ascii2hex`
	vboxmanage modifyvm $vm --cpuidset "$leaf" "$eax" $ebx "$ecx" "$edx"
done

After I start the VM, it gets to the "Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking ..." menu and at the end of the countdown it stops with "Guru Meditation. A critical error has occurred while running the virtual machine and the machine execution has been stopped.".

---

Linux 3.10.5 from the ntpasswd Live CD seems to work fine.

I'm running VirtualBox-5.1-5.1.22_115126_fedora25-1.x86_64 on a 4.10.16-200.fc25.x86_64 kernel.

[Cristian Ciupitu]

VBox.log

[Cristian Ciupitu]

VBox.png

[Frank Mehnert]

This is not a VirtualBox bug! The guest triggers a triple fault, which is what Windows XP often does if it has no better solution for recovering from an error. You set CPUID/0/eax=0 when your processor is supposed to have more than 1 CPUID leaf (it has 13).