Dell M6500 Host Hard crash

[Ben Schroeder]

My host is Windows 7 x64 on an Intel processor. Guests are Windows XP 32bit and Windows Server 2003 32bit.

Every once in a while, it is seemingly random, while running a guest my entire system just hard reboots. No blue screen, no guru meditation. There are no logs left as to why and nothing is recorded in the Windows event viewer about the crash. Sometimes the guest may run for a couple weeks at a time before crashing the host, then it will crash the host multiple times within 2 or 3 hours.

The hardware is a Dell M6500 i5 with 8GB ram.

Attached is the latest log from a machine that has crashed. I will supply any other logs that are needed to try and isolate the issue as either hardware or software.

thanks

[Ben Schroeder]

After a complete re-installation of Windows 7 the Host is still crashing randomly when running a Windows XP SP3 guest.

[Mihai Hanor]

you need to post 2 or 3 minidumps of the host crash

[Ben Schroeder]

There are no minidumps being created. There is no blue screen to track... this is why I've had such a problem trying to trace the problem back. The symptom on the Laptop is just like a power cord has been pulled out of the back of the laptop and the PC just reboots.

The only errors in the Windows 7 event log around the time of the event are in the system event log and are the following:

The previous system shutdown at 5:07:53 PM on ‎2/‎1/‎2011 was unexpected.

And

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

[Marcos]

This also happens with my Dell Latitude E6410. Processor is an i5 M560. Host is Windows 7 32-bit and guest is a Linux Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit.

[godot]

The same behaviour here with Dell E6410. Host: Windows 7. Guest: Any 64 bit guest

It seems to me the ticket #8330 is the same.

[godot]

Issue still present with 4.0.4.

No BSOD, minidump, or any useful log, just hard reset. Any hints for debugging?

[Mihai Hanor]

Try activating the driver verifier for the drivers that belong to Oracle VirtualBox, see a tutorial here:
​http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/101379-driver-verifier-enable-disable.html

The drivers should be VBoxDrv, VBoxNetAdp, VBoxNetFlt, VBoxUSB, VBoxUSBMon. You should try and enable the verifier for only 2-3 drivers at a time (e.g. VBoxDrv, VBoxNetAdp, VBoxNetFlt).

[Ben Schroeder]

Ok... verifier enabled on 3 of the drivers. Is there a log file or anything that we can upload? Or is it just something that we wait until the PC crashes again?

[Mihai Hanor]

Any driver, that is monitored by the driver verifier, that does something wrong, will trigger a host BSOD. Depending on the host OS settings, it can generate some type of a crash dump.

[Ben Schroeder]

Had verifier running on vboxdrv.sys, VBoxNetAdp.sys and vboxnetflt.sys. Hard crash and no BSOD and no memory.dmp created. I'll switch to the USB drivers and see if they reveal any more information.

[Ben Schroeder]

Ok... got a BSOD after enabling verify on the USB drivers.

How do I get the information to you guys? I have a 400mb memory.dmp file. Opening it up in WinDBG shows: "Probably caused by : VBoxUSBMon.sys ( VBoxUSBMon+dd7 )".

[Ben Schroeder]

Hit submit before I was ready... arggg.

The actual BSOD was: BugCheck C4, {d7, fffffa800b6ad9e0, fffffa80089cf690, 0}

[Mihai Hanor]

You should set the OS to take a minidump, which is 128kB for a 64 bit Windows OS, and not a full dump. Attach here the minidump. Also, you could uninstall VB, reboot, then reinstall it without USB support (especially if you don't use it), to see if the problem dissapears.

[Ben Schroeder]

I set up the minidump. Now just to see if I can make it crash again.

If I can I'll upload and uninstall Vbox. However, in the long term for our use the USB is needed for some hardware key licenses. None are currently in use on the machines at the time, but I have a couple machines where they are needed.

[Ben Schroeder]

BSOD Mini dump

[sunlover]

The driver verifier bugcheck should be fixed in:

​http://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/VirtualBox-win-4.0-rel-4.0.5-r70189-MultiArch.exe

Please try the build. Thanks.

[Ben Schroeder]

Install and I'm working it hard. Initial testing looks promising. So far no crashes or BSODs. I'm going to hit it hard through this week and see how it goes.

[Ben Schroeder]

Ok... just got another random reboot while working in Virtualbox. No BSOD. The current drivers being verified are the USB drivers. So I've now had random reboot while verification is on on all the VBox drivers.

So what is the next step?

[Mihai Hanor]

​http://altamodatech.com/blogs/?p=222

[Mihai Hanor]

​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32667 ​http://communities.vmware.com/thread/273918

[Ben Schroeder]

I've been talking with Dell on this exact issue, and their response is that it has to be software. Now the community is telling me it has to be hardware, which I personally agree with but I need ammo to go back with Dell to convince them that their hardware is suspect.

My BIOS is up to the latest per the dell website, but with a couple of different people seeing this there must be a way to isolate it to a hardware component... I'm just not sure how to get it done.

[Mihai Hanor]

I didn't say it's faulty hardware. I'm just showing you that most likely it's not related to VirtualBox. This could be caused by a buggy driver or bad hardware. Basics apply here. Check the hardware (memtest for RAM, CPU/GPU/PSU stressing software), relax RAM timings, disable intel turbo, etc. Making sure you can reproduce the issue on more than one machine is also important (assuming you have several identical machines). You could continue investigating all 3rd party drivers (non-Microsoft) installed in the system, upgrading all to the latest versions available from their respective developers (not from Dell), video, LAN/WLAN drivers, 3rd party antivirus/firewall drivers, even 3rd party USB drivers (you've metioned USB hardware key licenses, but I don't know that works), and any other 3rd party driver that you can find with Autoruns from Sysinternals, for example. Even disabling/uninstalling old drivers if you can't find more recent version (I've read a crash debugging example with an old mouse driver on W7). Also, you can use the driver verifier on small batches of 3rd party drivers.
I've already assumed you have the host OS fully updated.

[Ben Schroeder]

Hardware has been through a TON of tests. Everytime I call Dell about this I spend an hour testing the hardware for them.

Memtest86+ has been run for 48+ hours with no issues, as well as Prime95 running for 48+ hours with no issues.

All devices are at the current driver levels.

Windows 7 recently updated to SP1.

This issue is actually not directly reproducible. It is completely random... the only common thread from my use is VirtualBox. We have 2 other VBox users in our office that are experiencing the same issue and I've been deemed the guy to spearhead a solution.

I'm going to go back to Dell with the information that we have learned here and see if they have any other ideas.

[godot]

Replying to tehtide:

Hardware has been through a TON of tests. Everytime I call Dell about this I spend an hour testing the hardware for them.

Memtest86+ has been run for 48+ hours with no issues, as well as Prime95 running for 48+ hours with no issues.

All devices are at the current driver levels.

Windows 7 recently updated to SP1.

This issue is actually not directly reproducible. It is completely random... the only common thread from my use is VirtualBox. We have 2 other VBox users in our office that are experiencing the same issue and I've been deemed the guy to spearhead a solution.

I'm going to go back to Dell with the information that we have learned here and see if they have any other ideas.

+1

I removed VirtualBox temporarily and installed Vmware Player. With the same Guest it survive 3 days without any problem. with heavy usage (python,gcc build) Virtualbox works 10mins to 3-4 hours between crashes.

Unfortunetly i cant install Linux to the machine as host OS to test the reverse line-up.

[Mihai Hanor]

All the machines that experience these sudden reboots run on i5 processors? If yes, what are the CPU steppings involved? Do they all run on 8GB of RAM?

godot: try a live cd/dvd with manual installation of VB, if necessary

[Ben Schroeder]

All that have the random reboots are i5's with 8GB of ram. They were all purchased on the same order from Dell and all arrived at the same time. I can only imagine that they have the same revision of CPU etc...

Where would I find the CPU steppings? Is that a BIOS thing or something that I need to pull off the physical CPU?

[Mihai Hanor]

You can get the stepping from most system diagnostics tools, such as Cpu-z, Aida64 and others. ​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepping_(version_numbers)

[Ben Schroeder]

All CPUs are identical with regards to stepping and revision. Stepping is 2 revision is 9.

[Mihai Hanor]

actually, I forgot that the VB log contains this info

[sunlover]

tehtide, you could try to enable Nested Paging in the VirtualBox's VM Settings/System/Acceleration. In your VBox.log I see that it is disabled.

[Ben Schroeder]

I've tried running the VMs with all the settings on and off and any combination in between. I've also turned off all virtualization in the BIOS and tried that as well. None of them corrected any issue. Under all I've had random reboots while using VirtualBox.

[Mihai Hanor]

Have you tried disabling "Use host I/O cache", storage settings? check #8330

[godot]

Replying to mhanor:

Have you tried disabling "Use host I/O cache", storage settings? check #8330

It's still crash for me after 2 hours.

[dpn982]

Seems to have something to so with the Bluetooth module or driver. I disabled Bluetooth in the bios and no more issues.

[endre]

Replying to dpn982:

Seems to have something to so with the Bluetooth module or driver. I disabled Bluetooth in the bios and no more issues.

I have a Dell E6410, and I've disabled bluetooth and didn't help at all. VB ver 4.1.0 here.

[dpn982]

Replying to endre:

Replying to dpn982:

Seems to have something to so with the Bluetooth module or driver. I disabled Bluetooth in the bios and no more issues.

I have a Dell E6410, and I've disabled bluetooth and didn't help at all. VB ver 4.1.0 here.

Strange cause my M6500 hasn't had any issues with the host rebooting while a vm is running since I disabled bluetooth in the BIOS. I am using VB 4.1.4