VirtualBox crashes out when attempting to boot Windows Me

[dlharper]

When attempting to use Windows Me on one of my machines, VirtualBox crashes out with the message (from Windows host):

VirtualBox.exe - Application Error The instruction at 0x758BA614 referenced memory at 0x000C000C. The memory could not be written. Click on OK to terminate the program Click on CANCEL to debug the program

The result is quite predictable. It happens when I attempt to boot a Windows Me floppy. I can use a Windows 95 floppy to get the VM started, and so install Me from source files, but the resulting hard disk crashes out with the same error.

I’m using VirtualBox 5.1.10 in Windows 10 on an Acer Extensa 5635Z laptop, with a T4200 processor (32-bit, no VT-x) and 2Mb RAM. The problem does not happen on my other machine, which has a Core i5 (2500) processor amd 16Gb RAM.

I have managed to pin down the problem on the floppy to the disk boot sector, and the particular block of 54 bytes starting at offset 0x8D.

[dlharper]

Zip of log file

[Frank Mehnert]

Any Windows crash dump available?

[michaln]

Uncompressed log

[michaln]

I tried reproducing the crash on a similar enough system (Core 2 CPU, 32-bit Windows host) but no luck. With or without VT-x, the floppy boots up just fine.

Can you reproduce the crash on any other system if you disable hardware virtualization for the VM?

We'll probably need the crash dump to get at least some idea what's going on. See https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Core_dump

[Yuhong Bao]

And does a Win98 boot floppy work fine?