Windows XP failed after adding second virtual display on a VirtualBox VM

Question

Oracle VM VirtualBox failed when I added a monitor.

Under Oracle VM VirtualBox version 5.0.16 on Win10, I built and have been using a Windows XP virtual machine. I decided I wanted to add a second display to match my physical setup, and used “Settings/display/Monitor Count” to change the monitor count from 1 to 2. Now I cannot boot the virtual Windows XP.

Windows XP machine starts to load, then it quickly disappears and I get the message:

Failed to construct 'serial'/0! VERR_IOM_IOPORT_RANGE_CONFLICT (-2602) - The specified I/O port range intruded on an existing range. There is a I/O port conflict between two device, or a device tried to register the same range twice.

Changed the monitor count back to 1, but the startup error continues.

I really don’t want to rebuild the entire Windows XP machine again from scratch, because I’ll lose user files I've created within that machine.

Answer 1

I received some great help by posting on virtualbox.org.

I was advised to use VirtualBox Manager to define a second 32-bit virtual machine and choose "Use an existing hard disk file" and tell it to use the only virtual disk file I had in the list, after saving a backup copy of that disk file: WinXP.vdi (normal, 10.00 GB)

I fully expected to have to install a new WinXP from a WinXP ISO; instead, the new virtual WinXP immediately came up exactly as it was before I had the problem, with my user files and installed programs intact. And, the "bad" WinXP definition (the one that had been crashing) was still in VirtualBox Manager. Deleted that with no resultant problems.

I added a second display to the new machine and that worked, too. Don't know why I had the problem originally when I'd tried to add a display.