Under certain circumstances with a Windows XP / 2003 operating system – intelppm.sys and processr.sys can cause a virtual machine running under Virtual PC / Virtual Server to crash (by default this will cause the Windows guest operating system to reboot automatically – but if you have changed this setting you will see a blue screen). The reason for this crash is because these drivers are attempting to perform an unsupported operation inside of the virtual machine (like upgrading the physical processors microcode, changing power state on the physical processor).
Today this problem only occurs on Centrino and AMD K8 processors. Most people see this problem when they move a virtual machine that was created on another type of processor to a computer running one of these types of processors (and then they usually see the problem when they attempt to shutdown their virtual machine for the first time). Now you may be wondering why you have not heard about this problem more often – and the reason for that is that if these drivers fail once – they are smart enough to not attempt to perform the operation that failed again.
If you are seeing this problem repeatedly you can manually disable these drivers (with no negative side effect) by going to the following location in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesProcessor
Or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesIntelppm
And changing the ‘Start‘ value to ‘4‘.
In the mean time we have made some subtle changes to the way our hardware exposes the processor in Virtual Server R2 so that in future products these drivers should never get loaded inside of virtual machines.
Cheers,
Ben
this might help mysterious reboots that I get (daily it seems) from my 2003server guest (XP host).
so do we change the host or guest registery?
Sorry for not being clear there – you make the change in the guest registry.
Cheers,
Ben
So that’s why VirtualPC doesn’t work right on my (Centrino) laptop!
Also, rather than wondering around in the registry, you’re better off using "SC" command (included with Windows XP/2003), like this:
sc config processor start= disabled
sc config intelppm start= disabled
This is in the guest OS, of course.
Thanx, Ben & Jonathan. We just slammed into this issue with one of our [Avanade’s] clients, but it’s going the other way from what you described. A W2k3 image created and sysprep-ed on a Centrino notebook tanked when run on a desktop P4 w/ HT… The processor service couldn’t be found on the image, but the "sc config intelppm start= disabled" cured it AFTER I copied the image to the P4 BEFORE running sysprep. Thank you!! Note that it didn’t work when I disabled intelppm and sysprep-ed on the Centrino and then tried to run it on the PCs…
Ben,
FYI, I have the problem consistently on my DELL XPS Gen 4 (Intel P4 3.6 GHz, hyperthreading on) running Windows XP Media Center 2005.
Cheers,
Brian
Note: I had to use the SC commands at a Safe Mode with Command Prompt because my VPC Instance couldn’t even login without blue screening. After applying the two changes in Safe mode everything works fine.
This article was realy useful to me. To prevent to spend so much time to reintalling again all stuffs…
Thanks
Thank you too much, Thats works really good
Francisco, from Argentina
That's for the heads up on this.
Just as a note though. I had to start the guest machine in safe mode so the registry entry I had to change wasn't "…CurrentControlSet…" but was "…ControlSet002…"
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Even here in 2010 this has brought my Sun VirtualBox back to life!
Champion!
Solved my problems.
Moving a Guest XP 32bit from a 64bit Mandriva system to:
a 32bit Linux Mint host.
All on VirtualBox.
Thank you!
You are a wonderful person. I had this problem with a Centrino processor using Virtual Box and it was driving me crazy. Simply changed the registry as suggested for the intelppm and the problem went away. Thanks again
Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you,Thank you!!!!!!
Thanks a million, Ben. You have just solved my problem.
Thanks a lot! You have saved my day!
Thanks for this very useful tip. It's still a problem in October 2010. With your help I have successfully imported a virtual machine from my AMD based desktop to my Intel based Thinkpad. I had begun to think I was going to have to rebuild it completely. This has saved me hours of time. Thank you again.
I migrated a virtual XP machine from one Intel machine to another lower end Intel machine. I tried intelppm.sys start value to four but no luck so i placed both processor and intelppm.sys start values to four and it worked. Thanks for the post and your help this was a life saver.
WooHoo, that worked!
Thanks Virtual PC Guy! You da man!
Thanks man! It was really helped me!
The problem appeared when I updated VirtualBox to v 3.2.1. I spent whole day for that, and only your decision really helped.
Thank you Ben, you are VM god!
Prior to finding your blog I spend 3 days fruitlessly trying to boot Win7 and WinXP VirtualBox's that I copied
from a Dell Studio XPS Desktop development PC (Intel Core i7 Vista x64 PC with 12GB RAM) to a a Core i5-430UM Win7 x64 PC (HP TouchSmart tm2 with 8GB RAM).
Changed the Intellppm registry entries in the VMs and viola, they booted!
Ben, thanks for the post. I had exactly this problem with VirtualBox 3.2.12, Fedora Core 12 host on my Thinkpad X301 (Interl Centrino 2), WinXp Pro SP3 guest. Your workarounf did the trick. The driver in my case was Intelppm. Strange that the problem still persists five years after your post…
Anyway, you saved me the day. Thanks a lot!!!
Igor
thank you very much,that's so good!!
All these years later and this post still helped me out with an issue I was having tonight.
Thank you very much!
Thanks, you saved me a lot of time (preventing from installing new Windows OS)
Thanks
Martin
well.
I disabled through registry as you and said but i get the same error blue screen.
I even tried to remove vdi image and changed evry settings control and nothing helps 🙁
I even reinstalled xp and installed original microsoft xp and nothing helped.
so how do you fix this i have crossed all google pages but nothing can help me.
So do not understand what's going on here.
This is first time when this happens.
Incredible, 6 years later It works! I'm executing a Windows 7 64bits host and a XP as guest OS.
Thank you!
Thank you very much, I have been trying to figure this out all day, thank you.
Hi, I tried to move a Virtualbox VM from an AMD processor to an INTEL and I had this problem 0x000000CE
Maybe should I fix another key? maybe an AMD key??
Thanks!
Thx, solved my virtual box troubles ?
Sir, you're my god! Couldn't believe this page was the first option i found when googling for intelppm.sys.
Thanks a lot!
WOW… 😀 😀
Seven years later it still helps 😀 😀 😀
Thank you . thank you… thank you…. =D
it was helpfull
You're awesome… i have suffered a lot when i changed from an AMD host to an Intel …. so thanks!!
but I cann't found the two keys in my windows?
Thank you!! I create the virtual machine in an AMD-desktop, and moving to an Intel-laptop brought me to the BSoD… now I've solved!! 😀
Hi
I have problem with intelppm.sys driver causing high utlisation on CPU, but it is not on virtual server, its on physical server, is it safe to disable to driver?
Thank you. This was exactly what was needed. I thought I lost my entire development environment today after the latest Vbox update made this old error come back.
The registry modification on safe mode worked like a charm for me, was afraid to have a blue screen starting my windows XP on Virtual Box, don't know why this happened after a whole year working correctly, but so happy to find your solution…
Thanks a lot!
My virtualbox was freakinme out!
But, man… I LOVE YOU.
LOL
Thank you, from me to! Solved my problems with XP today.
Thank you, worked like a charm for winXp virtualBox's guest during migration on different cpu architecture) Maybe this blog post is eternal?)
Benjamin THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! I was freaking out but now that the problem has been solved am at ease. THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
I was having similar issues for Physical Server which has installed windows 2003 32bit version, but strange thing when I uninstalled Mcafee, the issue is fixed
Regards
Lawrence T
I've encountered this problem after migrated my xp's virtual machine running on Ubuntu with Xeon processor to a machine with centrino on both windows seven and ubuntu host's.
I've solved the issue thanks to your detailed explanation.
I'm very agreeded to you,!!
Thanks a lot from Spain!
thanks a lot, this issue appeared after upgrading to Win10 host, and was still present with virtualbox 5.0.4
This problem just came up with VirtualBox 5.04 on a Windows 10 host. Your suggestion solved the issue, thank you.
Yes, it worked! Windows XP on Ubuntu Host!
Gracias, Thanks, Thanks very much, Re-Thanks. Sos grande!!!! como Maradona!!!
This problem was occurred with me some days ago.
This article is the solution.
Thx
Guys, I have similar issue with the windows server 2008 SP2, Could you please let me know if changing the start value will have any impact to the server.
I faced the same problem after migrating a virtualbox WinXP guest from my old computer to a new one (both hosts are Win7 Pro). The solution didn’t work for me.
But I disabled the “crusoe” processor also, and now it’s ok. It’s very interesting, because I didn’t ever use the Transmeta Crosoe processor 🙂
12 years later and it helped me! thanks!