Elegant way to terminate the VirtualBox VBoxSVC.exe process

How do we terminate all the vbox*.exe (e.g.: VBoxSVC.exe, VBoxNetDHCP.exe, VBoxNetNAT.exe) processes without using the OS process signaling tools (e.g.: taskkill)?

cychoi

Posted 2014-04-21T18:03:18.340

Reputation: 367

VirtualBox.exe is just an interface for managing VirtualBox VMs, it doesn't needs to be running for the VMs to be up. – spuk – 2015-05-05T14:13:03.723

3Selecting File > Exit within VirtualBox.exe would be a proper way to end these processes. – Chirag Bhatia - chirag64 – 2014-04-21T18:09:32.137

1They don't exit after I closed the VirtualBox Manager (VirtualBox.exe). Probably they are stalled(?). I hope VBoxManage.exe has some ways to send termination signals to these processes manually. – cychoi – 2014-04-21T18:21:49.290

Answers

According to the user manual ("Chapter 8. VBoxManage"), "8.33. VBoxManage metrics":

... The data is available as long as the background VBoxSVC process is alive. That process terminates shortly after all VMs and frontends have been closed. ...

Then from "8.35. VBoxManage dhcpserver":

... After this, VirtualBox will automatically start the DHCP server for given internal or host-only network as soon as the first virtual machine which uses that network is started. ...

So, VBoxSVC.exe should stop automatically. OTOH, I'm guessing but I don't think you'd have any problem stopping VBoxNetDHCP.exe and VBoxNetNAT.exe with OS signalling, if they don't already stop automatically too. But I don't see why you'd need to stop them.

FWIW, I just had the VBoxNetAdp.sys driver crash for lack of memory, killing the network between my VMs, and rerunning VBoxNetNAT.exe manually, then VBoxManage.exe natnetwork start --netname NatNetwork got the network back without issues. That seems to indicate one would have no problem by stopping it with OS signals.

spuk

Posted 2014-04-21T18:03:18.340

Reputation: 229

2Yep, it seems it can take some time (up to several minutes), but it finally terminates itself. – Dawid Ferenczy Rogožan – 2015-10-21T18:46:10.890

-1

Or the easy way is to just press Ctrl+Alt+Del and click on the task Manager. The find Oracle box and right click. Then click End Task.

The Yellow Chicken

Posted 2014-04-21T18:03:18.340

Reputation: 1

1I wouldn't say this is elegant. And you forgot the Ctrl+Shift+Esc shortcut. – Vylix – 2017-08-13T09:55:21.537

The asker specifically stated "without using the OS process signaling tools". – Brian A. Henning – 2019-08-30T13:49:37.313