Instability in VirtualBox

English Virtualization
1

I recently tried using VirtualBox again (after not using for about 2 years).

My Windows 10 guest (which worked just fine 2 years ago) is now unstable - crashes very frequently, with what looks like memory problems.

I just tried installing a new guest with Tumbleweed (20260403), and it fails during installation. One example is:

image
image1012×234 12.9 KB

Retry sometimes works. Starting the installation over usually fails at a different point.

My host is fine - never has any unexpected issues, so I don’t think this is a hardware problem.

How do we find out what is causing this issue?

2

How is the guest machine configured? W10 works here, apparently, with 4 cores, 4GB RAM, 256MB video memory and judging from system load likely 2 cores, 2GB and 128 MB might work as well. Virtual disk is 25GB.

3

The Windows 10 guest has 4 GB RAM, 4 CPU cores, 128 MB Video Memory - exactly the same configuration as 2 years ago when I used it without issues.

The new Tumbleweed guest I tried to install has 4 GB RAM, 4 CPU cores, 15 MB Video Memory.

4

Have you tried it with a new Version?

5

I just tried with 20260516. Got this error:

image
image1039×376 31.7 KB

Reboot guest and tried installation again, and got this error:

image
image1054×372 32.1 KB

I checked the checksum of the .ISO - it passes just fine.

6

I just used
openSUSE-Tumbleweed-DVD-x86_64-Snapshot20260515-Media.iso
On a install
I had no issues

7

Windows 10 guest (which worked just fine 2 years ago) is now unstable - crashes very frequently, with what looks like memory problems.

But it does start up?
Are there any log files, sometimes they get dumped in your home user

8

The Windows 10 guest starts to start, but often gets errors like:

image
image776×490 26.6 KB

or
image
image596×615 7.77 KB

Sometimes it boots to a desktop, then crashes, or just reboots.

This is the same guest that worked perfectly fine a year or two ago. Same host, only changes are (lots of) updates. I have even tried restoring to a couple of different snapshots of the guest. I just had one of about 10 tries actually boot up, and seem stable (at least for a couple of minutes). I told the guest to shut down, then powered back on - crashed again.

When I try installing Tumbleweed, it seems to always get to installing packages, then usually dies with an error like the ones I listed above.