# VirtualBox kernel panics...

## The_Great_Sephiroth

For the past few months the desktops at my office will randomly have a kernel panic while using VirtualBox. This happens almost exclusively when shutting down the VM. The VMs are Windows 7 Pro 64bit with legal licenses from the systems they are on. We basically wiped the disk, put Gentoo onto the system, then installed 7 in VBox and used the key on the system.

Anyway, now it is happening randomly. I was copying files between locations on the virtual system and I got the image below.

VirtualBox Panic

How do I figure this out? It is REALLY not good.

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## NeddySeagoon

The_Great_Sephiroth,

That's a very old kernel, probably with an equally old VBox.

Step one in to reproduce the error with current software.  

That's a 5+ year old laptop.  It may well be overheating just with the accumulated dust of the years.

A good clean and new thermal paste has been known to work wonders.

What does lm-sensors have to say about operating temperatures?

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## The_Great_Sephiroth

This is not heat-related. I disassemble and clean it yearly, including fresh AS5 for the CPU and GPU. It starts at around 80f and works its way up. Full load (big emerge, for example) gets it up to 130f. Idling after warmed up is around 88f. Also, this is happening on two other systems. Desktop systems, at that.

I have a widget for Plasma which shows HDD temp and individual core temps on my system tray. It uses lm-sensors to get those readings. That's how I knew what my temperatures were. I monitor them constantly.

As for the kernel, if I upgrade I lose all sound. I messed and messed with this a while back and became frustrated. Kernel 4 broke audio on my system so I am sticking with the LTS kernel for now.

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## NeddySeagoon

The_Great_Sephiroth,

Its not thermal and its probably not hardware, as its common across several systems.

The next question is what changed that's common across these systems?

That's usually difficult to answer.  /var/log/emerge.log may offer some hints.

Its unlikely to offer any pointers to a fix though because downgrading things is not a long term solution.

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