System HDD on AHCI SATA disappears on Windows XP guest without BSOD when changing virtio driver

[arcivanov]

Host:

Fedora 15 x86_64

Linux aivanov-pc.us.oracle.com 2.6.40.4-5.fc15.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Aug 30 14:38:32 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Guest: Windows XP 32bit SP3, latest updates

Guest configuration:

Chipset: ICH9 Primary Disk: SATA AHCI 1 Port, *no* host I/O cache, *raw* disk. Network: paravirt

How to reproduce:

1) Download latest KVM virtio driver (​http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/virtio-win-0.1-15.iso) 2) Mount ISO to DVD-ROM for Windows Guest 3) Update Ethernet adapter driver

Effect:

Primary guest disk disappears from the list of devices entirely. Windows does *NOT* BSOD, starts reporting failed delayed writes and slowly becomes completely unusable with every process eventually requiring disk access failing. Guest cannot shutdown by itself and has to be powered off.

This is reproducible every time.

[arcivanov]

Please make a correction - host type should be "Linux".

[arcivanov]

Same bug persists in 4.1.4.

[Frank Mehnert]

Is it reproducible if you switch the chipset from ICH9 to PIIX3?

[Danial]

reproducible on windows 7 with a windows XP guest, ICH9 and PIIX3 both affected.

Reproduction is as simple as opening device manager and selecting the action "Scan for hardware changes"

in some instances the VM just guest process just automatically closes

[Frank Mehnert]

Please disable page fusion -- still reproducible?

[Danial]

if you can point out where such a setting is, i will disable it.

[Danial]

ah, nope. didn't help.

[Frank Mehnert]

Could you attach a VBox.log file of the VM with page fusion disabled?

[Danial]

Frank, this appears to be the same problem as https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/6675

i think we should merge these and follow up with the older of the two?

[Frank Mehnert]

Right, thanks for pointing out.