Virtual Grumbles

So I saw this past week that Oracle had come out with a new build of VirtualBox.

Downloads – Oracle VM VirtualBox - version 4.3.22

I’ve had some real headaches lately with recent VirtualBox builds so I should have known better.

The upgrade went first onto my “Alister” laptop and in less than a minute the update process had smoothly completed.  That gave me hope and confidence.

Then I tried it the following day on my “Tatiana” laptop. That took over 15 minutes, (apparently) stalled update applications, one very exciting BSOD, multiple repair/install/remove routines, and significant banging of forehead on desk surface.

I did manage to get VirtualBox pulled off Tatiana, and to recover with no lingering harm from the BSOD, but as Tatiana remains my “primary” beloved system, VirtualBox is now “VERBOTEN” on Tatiana.

I do still need access to it on Tatiana, so I’m going to stick with VMware Player 6.0 only which I’ve had no issues with, and then run VirtualBox inside one of my tester Windows VM’s.

It’s a long tail solution, but it’s the safest, and with an i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and careful selection of the VM RAM allocations, Tatiana should be up to the task.

Cheers,

--Claus V.