Windows XP guest freeze

[Kevin Patterson]

Host hardware: MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.5

Issue: Trying to build a Windows XP SP2 guest and find that it fails after 20% formatting of a dynamic disk. I can reliably reproduce this behaviour every time, even if I try different XP setup media.

Although I've verified the host disk, is this an early indicator that something could be wrong it? I only ask because other work colleagues who have identically-spec'ed MacBook Pros have successfully built XP guests.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Without a VBox.log there's nothing we can do for you. Did you assign too much memory to the guest?

[Kevin Patterson]

Replying to sandervl73:

Without a VBox.log there's nothing we can do for you. Did you assign too much memory to the guest?

Sorry, shoulda thought...I *did* assign 2GB of memory to the guest. I'll try less - 1GB?

[Sander van Leeuwen]

That depends on how much you have in your machine. XP runs fine with 256 or 512 MB. Never try to assign more than 50% of your computer's memory to a VM.

[Kevin Patterson]

Replying to sandervl73:

That depends on how much you have in your machine. XP runs fine with 256 or 512 MB. Never try to assign more than 50% of your computer's memory to a VM.

Looks like reducing the amount of memory did the trick...thanks very much for your prompt responses. I'm happy for you to close this ticket.

Thanks again.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

It's kind of strange you didn't get a warning about this though. I'll need to check this.

[Udo Güngerich]

Replying to sandervl73:

It's kind of strange you didn't get a warning about this though. I'll need to check this.

I tried to install Windows XP on an iMac with Mac OS X 10.5.2 Build 9C2028 and had the exact same problem:

Asserted 1024 MB RAM and it froze while formatting (independend of filesystem type)

Asserted 512 MB RAM and all went fine ;)

The System is an iMac8,1 with 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM (!), Intel Core 2 Duo

While creating a new guest system, VirtualBox shows an (apparent) maximum of 3854 MB RAM, but the system has only 1024 MB. As I see it, VirtualBox does not mean to show the real maximum, but it is not clear to the user ;)

Oh, and - no warning was shown whatsoever :(

[aeichner]

Since 2.1.0 the GUI shows a warning if too much memory is assigned to the guest, closing.