VirtualBox: WinXP guest from Ubuntu crashing and rebooting in openSUSE

At work, I sometimes need Windows for legacy programs, or for not messing up the layout of protected Word documents. For all these little things, VirtualBox (non OSE for me) works like a charm. Since my switch from Ubuntu to openSUSE, however, I was unable to use the virtual windows disk (vdi file) I created under Ubuntu: right after booting up Windows, I would get a glimpse of a BSOD (blue screen), and Windows would reboot (not even leaving me time to study the BSOD). Booting into safe mode wouldn’t help.
Not wanting to create yet another virtual disk, I set out on an epic quest: a veritable search-and-destroy-the-cause mission. What finally fixed the whole thing, was setting the IDE Controller Type (Settings – General – Advanced) to PIX3 instead of PIX4. Apparently, the default setings are different between different distro’s.

2 Responses to “VirtualBox: WinXP guest from Ubuntu crashing and rebooting in openSUSE”


  1. 1 eric

    wow, thanks for this info

    I had set up my VM under Ubuntu but it would go into BSOD inside virtualbox running on XP. Doing this change did the trick

    Great stuff!

  2. 2 jefke

    Glad it was of any help!

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