VirtualBox 4.1.8 on RedHat 6: Intermittent Soft Lockup

[mgwolff]

I am using VirtualBox 4.1.8 on a RedHat 6 (kernel 2.6.32-131.22.1.el6.x86_64) machine to run a Windows 7 64bit VM.
The host system is a dual six core Intel Xeon E5645 @ 2.4GHz, with 72GB RAM.
The guest system is configured to use two CPUs and 4GB of RAM.
This system is rebooted every day at around midnight (for reasons unrelated to VirtualBox).
Sometimes, the system will soft lockup after the reboot.
In /var/log/messages, "VboxHeadless" seems to be identified as the culprit.
I have not been able to reproduce this error, it only seems to happen sometimes, maybe every two weeks.
It also does not happen at a specific time after the reboot, sometimes it is just a couple of minutes, another time it could be after a couple of hours of uptime.
Attached is:

1. An excerpt from /var/log/messages, showing the error (messages_excerpt.txt)
2. The output of vminfo (vminfo.txt)
3. The VirtualBox log file from before the latest crash (Vbox.log)

Let me know if you need any additional information.

Thanks!

[Frank Mehnert]

Please switch the chipset from ICH9 to PIIX3. Does that fix your problem?

[mgwolff]

I have switched to the PIIX3 chipset.
Note that I did not re-install Windows to do so, I just changed the setting and restarted the VM.
It seemed to work fine, but let me know if you prefer me to re-install Windows.

[Frank Mehnert]

Thanks for testing. If it works for you then there is no need to reinstall Windows. We are aware of some issues with the ICH9 chipset, therefore it is marked as experimental.

[mgwolff]

Today, the soft lockup has happened again, even after switching to the PIIX3 chipset.
Could you update the subject line to reflect this?

[Frank Mehnert]

Do you have the VBox.log file from that session available?

[mgwolff]

I have attached the log file (VBox_20120130.log).
Thanks for changing the subject.

[Frank Mehnert]

It is likely that your problem was fixed with VBox 4.1.20. Please reopen (and attach a VBox.log file) if you can reproduce this problem with that new release.