When i restart mij FreeBSD15 system, i can do an installation from an iso image of windows 2022. When the system runs for a while, with 10 Vbox VM's i cannot install windows anymore. It hangs at the Windows logo. It turns out that i had too few handlers, i upgraded from 24GB to 48 GB handlers and that solved the issue.
Also a peace from chatgpt:
The ISO was known to be good and had been used successfully many times. Existing Windows Server 2022 VMs continued to work normally.
The problem also occurred with a VM copied from VirtualBox 6.2 to VirtualBox 7.2.
Previous value:
vm.max_user_wired=6291456
New value:
vm.max_user_wired=12582912
The persistent setting in /etc/sysctl.conf is now:
vm.max_user_wired = 12582912
After increasing this value, the Windows Server 2022 installation worked.
Hopefully this saves someone else hours of troubleshooting.
Also a peace from chatgpt:
Solved: Windows Server 2022 installation hangs in VirtualBox 7.2 on FreeBSD 15 — increasing vm.max_user_wired fixed it
Environment
- Host OS: FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE
- Virtualization: VirtualBox OSE 7.2.18
- Guest OS: Windows Server 2022
- Hardware: Intel Xeon X5670, 192 GB RAM
Problem
A Windows Server 2022 installation from DVD would hang at the Windows logo during boot. VirtualBox's headless process consumed approximately one CPU core, and the VM log stopped progressing shortly after startup.The ISO was known to be good and had been used successfully many times. Existing Windows Server 2022 VMs continued to work normally.
The problem also occurred with a VM copied from VirtualBox 6.2 to VirtualBox 7.2.
Solution
The problem was resolved by increasing the FreeBSD sysctl vm.max_user_wired from approximately 24 GiB to 48 GiB.Previous value:
vm.max_user_wired=6291456
New value:
vm.max_user_wired=12582912
The persistent setting in /etc/sysctl.conf is now:
vm.max_user_wired = 12582912
After increasing this value, the Windows Server 2022 installation worked.
Conclusion
Increasing vm.max_user_wired resolved the installation hang in this environment. The exact underlying cause has not yet been established, but the finding may help other FreeBSD users running VirtualBox 7.2 with Windows guests.Hopefully this saves someone else hours of troubleshooting.