Windows 11 VM freezes with Windows 11 Host, VirtualBox 7.0.4

[cmptrgk]

I am running Windows 11 Pro 22621.819 with VirtualBox 7.0.4 and Hyper-V disabled. I was seeing the Windows 11 Guest VM freeze very quickly after boot, often within a few minutes. After the upgrade to 7.0.4 it still freezes, but after running for several hours. So it's better, but not fixed. This VM is a prebuilt developer image from Microsoft (WinDev2210Eval) with all Windows Updates applied to it.

[Ian Puleston]

I am seeing the same: mine freezes every few days running a Windows 11 guest on a Windows 11 host. I was seeing it with 7.0.4, still seeing it with 7.0.6. A few people reported it here: ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=107848&p=528677#p527944.

[Ian Puleston]

Logs from 7.0.6 when guest system froze at 12:32 pm.

[Ian Puleston]

Still regularly hitting this freezing issue with 7.0.8.

Every time it happens I see this in the log:

13:25:19.137332 VMMDev: vmmDevHeartbeatFlatlinedTimer: Guest seems to be unresponsive. Last heartbeat received 4 seconds ago

My current set of logs show 4 instances of that happening over about 75 hours total, and every time it happened it was preceded by this being logged about 5-6 seconds earlier:

01:57:54.304622 Audio: Device configuration of driver 'WasAPI' has changed
01:57:54.644945 Audio: Found 8 devices for driver 'WasAPI'

...followed by a list of the 8 audio devices.

There are a lot of other instances of these "WasAPI" logs getting printed, but on average it is logged about 3 times per hour, so seeing it 5-6 seconds before each hang seems unlikely to be a coincidence.

[fth0]

FWIW, if you look closely at the 6/8 audio devices, you'll notice that the difference are the two NVIDIA audio devices. This probably correlates with the display being turned off/on (e.g. screen saver, screen blanking, power management).

[Ian Puleston]

That makes total sense, thanks. The one that happened today was during a remote meeting, during which I spent a lot of time watching other people presenting, and during that my display blanked a few times due to no activity locally. The latest vbox log shows a change from 8 audio devices down to 6, with the 2 Nvidia ones that are built into monitors vanishing, then 3 seconds later it went back up to 8 (which would be me hitting a key to wake the monitors back up), then vmmDevHeartbeatFlatlinedTimer reporting the guest as unresponsive 3 seconds after that.

That sequence happened a few times in the 30 minutes preceding the hang. Approximately every 5 minutes (which is the Windows display shut off timeout) it dropped from 8 devices down to 6, then back up to 8 a few seconds later when I hit something to wake them back up.

The hang up has happened during this weekly meeting quite a few times now, which would fit with it being triggered by the monitors being woken from sleep as above there. I've also noticed that it often seems to happen when I go away from my PC, coming back to find that the VM is frozen again, and that too fits with the same.

I've now disabled turning off the monitors in the guest, and will see if that make a difference.

[Ian Puleston]

I just had it freeze on me again. Sleeping and turning off the monitors is still disabled in the guest, and this time I was actively working on it when it happened and the monitors did not turn off. Still the log shows the two Nvidia audio devices on them disappearing/reappearing for some reason, but this time they went away about 8 hours earlier, and came back nearly 2 hours before the freeze, so probably not related.

What we do see at the time of the hang-up is "AHCI#0: Port 0 reset" and "VD#0: Cancelling all active requests". The log start time of 20:25 equates to 13:25 local time (PST), so the 19:49 time offset of those would be 10:54am local time, and the freeze happened some time just before 11am.

Here is the log leading up to the freeze (with the detail of the devices pruned out for clarity):

0:00:04.045474 VirtualBox VM 7.0.8 r156879 win.amd64 (Apr 17 2023 16:42:53) release log
00:00:04.045475 Log opened 2023-05-02T20:25:22.762047700Z
...
11:30:14.610125 Audio: Found 6 devices for driver 'WasAPI'
11:30:14.610144 Audio: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)':
11:30:14.610150 Audio: Device 'Realtek Digital Output (Realtek(R) Audio)':
11:30:14.610155 Audio: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)':
11:30:14.610159 Audio: Device 'Microphone (2- USB PnP Audio Device)':
11:30:14.610163 Audio: Device 'Microphone (Creative Live! Cam Sync V3 Mic)':
11:30:14.610167 Audio: Device 'Microphone (2- USB PnP Audio Device)':
18:19:13.093900 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
19:49:38.741184 Audio: Device configuration of driver 'WasAPI' has changed
19:49:38.860010 Audio: Device configuration of driver 'WasAPI' has changed
19:49:39.108708 Audio: Device configuration of driver 'WasAPI' has changed
19:49:39.296135 Audio: Device configuration of driver 'WasAPI' has changed
19:49:39.636267 Audio: Found 8 devices for driver 'WasAPI'
19:49:39.636292 Audio: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)':
19:49:39.636298 Audio: Device 'DELL S2715H (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)':
19:49:39.636310 Audio: Device 'Realtek Digital Output (Realtek(R) Audio)':
19:49:39.636315 Audio: Device 'ASUS VE278 (NVIDIA High Definition Audio)':
19:49:39.636319 Audio: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)':
19:49:39.636323 Audio: Device 'Microphone (2- USB PnP Audio Device)':
19:49:39.636327 Audio: Device 'Microphone (Creative Live! Cam Sync V3 Mic)':
19:49:39.636331 Audio: Device 'Microphone (2- USB PnP Audio Device)':
19:52:36.941200 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
19:52:36.943238 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
20:26:41.569900 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
20:26:41.571272 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
20:34:03.958682 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
20:34:03.960020 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
20:37:32.661490 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
20:37:32.662660 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
20:50:08.487204 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
20:50:08.488572 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
21:03:48.543173 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL unloaded.
21:03:48.544142 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXNP: DLL loaded.
21:29:47.327698 AHCI#0: Port 0 reset
21:29:47.328810 VD#0: Cancelling all active requests

21:42:58.844116 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'RESETTING'

I've now disabled the two Nvidia audio devices in the host, just to take them out of the picture, since I don't use them.

[tekstryder]

Replying to Ian-P:

I just had it freeze on me again...

Hi @Ian-P,

Thanks for continuing to troubleshoot this grievous problem.

FYI similar Win 11 Guest Freeze bug reports:

• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/21291
• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/21431
• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/21448
• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/21492

And, these 3 VB forum threads which are all continuations of the same topic (Win11 Guest Freeze):

• ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=107363
• ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=108440
• ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=109147

[Ian Puleston]

I had it freeze up on me twice today. I'm not sure about the timing of the 1st one, but the 2nd was preceded by those same "Device configuration of driver 'WasAPI' has changed" messages, again showing the devices list twice a few minutes apart and then freezing right after the 2nd one. This time though the number of devices stayed at 6 since I've now disabled the two monitor Nvidia audio devices that were previously disappearing/reappearing. I was at lunch when this one happened, and those may well have coincided with the monitors turning off then back on in the host.

9 seconds after the 2nd of those it reported this:

07:15:44.814595 VMMDev: vmmDevHeartbeatFlatlinedTimer: Guest seems to be unresponsive. Last heartbeat received 4 seconds ago

Based on what I read at some of the above links, I've now installed guest additions version 6.1.44 to see if that gets round the problem.