Audio hangs during vm reboot

[Mike]

System Info: Virtualbox 4.1.6 r74713 Win 7 Ult x64 Intel P35 North / ICH9R South bridges Soundmax Integrated Audio: AnalogDevices provided driver (WHQL) 6.10.2.6585 Truecrypt v7.1 (not used on any partition / disk accessed by virtualbox, but active nonetheless) NEC usb 3.0 pci-e adapter (used to host the ssd running the vms): NEC Electronics provided driver (WHQL) 1.0.19.0

Every time any Windows based guest is rebooted the audio hangs in a short loop, this occurs after the Oracle VM splash screen / bios, and immediately after the ntdetect.com cursor window dissappears, resizes to a larger black screen-window, and just before the loading splash screen for windows appears.

It seems to occur no matter what hard drive hosts the .vhd file (I have been using this format exclusively)

[vasily Levchenko]

Could you please attach log file?

[Mike]

Log files attached.

[vasily Levchenko]

Could you please clarify a bit how do you detect this "hangs in short loop"?

[Mike]

It turns out I wasn't thorough enough initially. It's actually a brief complete system hang. I noticed it because I usually listen to Pandora while I work, and it would loop a very brief portion of any song a dozen+ times, the duration varies, seems random, but is from a fraction of a second to a full second. I went back, and did some testing, and this is what I have found.

I have stopped all software, and services that I can, this has no effect (no av installed either.)

XP, 7 x86, 7 x64, 2008, and 2008 x64 do not hang. 2008 R2 VM's hang once they are installed. More on that below.

I also created a few SBS 2011 VM's, since it is a 2008 R2 base OS, to make sure that my 2008 R2 installer wasn't somehow the culprit. SBS 2011 hangs at the same point, before it is actually installed, while it is still booting off of the cd. At this point I created other SBS, and R2 VM's with different format hard drives attached. An SBS VM will hang with a vdi, or vhd hard drive, but it doesn't hang with a vmdk hard drive.

2008 R2 doesn't hang like SBS will; while it is just loading the OS. It waits until the VM is fully installed. The VM will reboot once after installation displaying 'Setup is updating registry settings', then 'Completing Installation', it will then reboot a second time, and just before displaying 'Setup is preparing your computer for first use' it will make my host machine hang briefly as described. This is a complete hard hang, where the mouse doen't move, and keyboard is ignored. My host machine has always recovered however after ~1 second.

It doesn't seem to matter whether the underlying is vhd, vdi, or vmdk for 2008 R2, they all hang only once they are installed. I haven't actually let an SBS 2011 VM finish installing, as I assume they will hang as well. I also tried attaching an SBS 2011 to a 20 gig fixed vhd, and it still hung during startup (before being installed).

So overall very odd, the machine is perfectly stable other than this, no errors anywhere. Though I have noticed that Explorer now forgets my icon's position everytime I reboot my machine. If it is relevant, I have monitors, 2 of them are on an Nvidia GTX 260, and 2 of them on a GTX 210.

Let me know if there is any other testing that I can do.

[Mike]

I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but I took the same SBS 2011 VM, and removed the disk (vhd), and then the controller, and it still hung. I re-added the controller, and created a vmdk disk, and it didn't hang.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if still relevant with VBox 4.2.12.