unable to save machine state in case of host reboot/shutdown event

[Mihai Hanor]

Host: Windows 7 SP1 x64

When a shutdown/reboot event is issued on the host OS, the VirtualBox frontend presents, to the user, the Close VM window, allowing the user to save or properly shutdown the guest. But saving the VM state isn't possible, because the VirtualBox COM service (VBoxSVC) exits immediately. The user is only able to shut down or power off the VM. When choosing to save the state, the user encounters this error:

Failed to save the state of the virtual machine .

Callee RC: RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE 0x800706BA (0x800706BA)

[RBerteig]

Unattended reboot is part of the normal life cycle of a Windows host machine. VB like any other Windows application should be capable of taking some sensible action when it occurs. Just advising people to turn off automatic updates is the wrong approach.

The principle of least surprise would be for an unattended shutdown (or reboot) as caused by an automatic update installation to save the state of any open VMs. Returning to the office to find that an unexpected windows update has forcibly crashed a VM is not a satisfactory end user experience.

[Mihai Hanor]

The current behavior of VirtualBox, when rebooting the Windows host: the VM terminates with a VirtualBox critical error message if it tries to access the COM service.

[Mihai Hanor]

Related: #15059

[Phuah Yee Keat]

Faced the same issue. Any workaround?

[m6477]

Possibly related: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/15347