Fix a VirtualBox Windows crash-on-pause issue

Dec 12, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: robg

I've recently been spending a lot of time in the various virtualization apps -- VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, and Sun VirtualBox. VirtualBox was recently upgraded to version 2.0.6, and after upgrading, I had issues with my Vista guest OS on my Mac Pro, which was previously working fine.

Whenever I chose to sleep or shut down Vista, the progress bar would move a bit at first, then jump back to the main VirtualBox window, where the Vista VM's status would read "Aborted." (Somewhat interestingly, the exact same installation of Vista on my MacBook Pro doesn't exhibit this issue under 2.0.6.)

After some searching, I found this thread on the VirtualBox forums that described the exact same problem. User withfries2, who posted the problem, also posted back (thank you!) with the solution he found:

Enable the IO APIC option (select your VM, hit the Settings button at the top, go the Advanced tab, and select the Enable IO APIC checkbox under Extended Features), and Virtual Box will save and shut down cleanly without getting to the dread Aborted state.
I tried this, and indeed, it fixed the problem with Vista on my Mac Pro. If you're having the same issue, it might be worth a shot.

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