XP guest won't do a restart on Linux host

[John]

I have upgraded to Vbox 4.1.0 from 4.0.10 on a Gentoo Linux host. Have been using 4.0.10 for several months with no issues. Since the upgrade, I cannot get XP SPK3 to do a restart. I Have two VM's on the same box under 4.1.0, and they now both exhibit the issue. If you need/want to do a restart, either through shutdown, or an installed program that wishes to "Restart Now" (Imagine that?), the XP guest will just hang after going through all the logging off stuff. Just like XP did in the old days under some crappy BIOS's. I can choose Shutdown or Log Off (And ACPI Shutdown from the Manage Menu) and all works as expected.

The only way to get out of that hung condition is power off the VM through the Manage menu or reset through the manage menu.

No software was installed on the guest after upgrading to 4.1.0 before this issue was noticed.

Observation: The disk icon in the manager does all the required blinking that you normally see during a shut down. However, once it offloads and syncs, there is the normal pause then one more short flash at the time it should reset, but that's it and it just hangs there.

Question: Is there anyway to safely revert back to 4.0.10 without loosing my two VM's. Not much said anywhere about going backwards and what happens to the VM's.

Thanks. I'll try to get you anything you require to further troubleshoot this issue. I am running Kernel 2.6.38-gentoo-r1

[Göran Sävström]

Replying to JohnJaeger:

I have upgraded to Vbox 4.1.0 from 4.0.10 on a Gentoo Linux host. Have been using 4.0.10 for several months with no issues. Since the upgrade, I cannot get XP SPK3 to do a restart. I Have two VM's on the same box under 4.1.0, and they now both exhibit the issue. If you need/want to do a restart, either through shutdown, or an installed program that wishes to "Restart Now" (Imagine that?), the XP guest will just hang after going through all the logging off stuff. Just like XP did in the old days under some crappy BIOS's. I can choose Shutdown or Log Off (And ACPI Shutdown from the Manage Menu) and all works as expected.

The only way to get out of that hung condition is power off the VM through the Manage menu or reset through the manage menu.

No software was installed on the guest after upgrading to 4.1.0 before this issue was noticed.

Observation: The disk icon in the manager does all the required blinking that you normally see during a shut down. However, once it offloads and syncs, there is the normal pause then one more short flash at the time it should reset, but that's it and it just hangs there.

Question: Is there anyway to safely revert back to 4.0.10 without loosing my two VM's. Not much said anywhere about going backwards and what happens to the VM's.

Thanks. I'll try to get you anything you require to further troubleshoot this issue. I am running Kernel 2.6.38-gentoo-r1

I have the same problem. Running Debian Testing as host and get the same problem with my Win XP guest.

Did you also upgrade/reinstall the guest additions when upgrading Virtualbox? I am asking because I did just that, and from going through some "trial and error" I found that reverting the guest additions to 4.0.x (don't remember the exact version I upgraded from) I got rid of the problem.

Another option is the solution I got from the forums: Untick the setting for "absolute pointing device" and it might start working again.

Of course the above options are no way to solve a "bug" in the long run, but it should work as a temporary solution.

[Alexey Loukianov]

This one affects me too. Host: Fedora 14 32bit Linux with PAE kernel, Vbox 4.1.2. Guest: Windows XP Professional SP3. Every time I try to restart guest system all I've got is a hang at "Logging off..." screen. Another observation: in case I try to logoff current user I've got a messagebox popup saying something like "The system is waiting for the following process to exit" with a progressbar countdown. The name of the process is something like "VBoxSharedClipboardSevice.exe". Might be related. Would try to downgrade Guest Additions to ones from the 4.0.x version and check if this would allow to workaround the problem.

[Alexey Loukianov]

Upd. Uninstalling Guest Additions solved the problem. Installing Guest Additions from 4.0.12 went fine and workarounds both problems I had mentioned in previous message.

[Emerson Prado]

I also have this problem with a XP guest I have just built (no problems with an older one - see below). When I restart my XP guest, it hangs after all shutdown process, and I can only proceed with Host+r.
The crash occurs during shutdown and not during reloading - the VB loading screen doesn't have a chance to appear.
I uninstalled Guest Additions and the guest hung only in the first restart, but restarted successfully in all later attempts. I then reinstalled Guest Additions, and could restart OK the first time, but then failed in all later attempts. That is, Guest Additions is the problem here too, and it only appears after a restart - either after installing or uninstalling GA.
Another XP guest installed in a previous version of VB and GA (probably 4.0.*, but I'm not sure) restarts without problems in the current VB (see below). So it has something to do with what VB or GA tells Windows during OS installation.
Shutdown is OK in this guest. Event Viewer shows no error or warning.
My host is Linux Mint Debian Edition sync'ed to Debian Stable. I use VB 4.1.2 r73507. My guests are Windows XP SP3 en-US.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if still relevant with VBox 4.1.14.