I start an app running inside a virtual machine and it runs fine. I exit the app. I then try to start the app again. Nothing (no error messages, just appears to ignore the request). If I exit the VM, saving state, then reenter the VM, lo and behold - the app I tried to start up previously NOW starts. It's as if the VM saved up my start request that failed from the 1st instance of the VM and applied it on the 2nd instance. If I try to start the app multiple times in that 1st VM instance (all failing after the one initial good start), then ALL of those multiple start attempts are saved up and applied on the 2nd VM instance, so I get multiple starts of the app in that 2nd instance.

The Guest OS is Windows, so and I checked its Task Manager after the initial successful app run/exit. I don't see any leftover processes from the app hanging around. It appears to have exited cleanly, but it just won't restart - until after I save/reenter the VM.

This app USED to run under Wine, but an older version of Wine running on an older OS - Ubuntu 8.10 x32. It does not work under Wine 1.4 on LinuxMint_13(Maya)_Xfce_x64 however.

Kind of two questions.

Why doesn't an old app work on newer wine? I'd suspect some binary or x86 issue. Can you install older wine?

Now as to what affects a machine state on save that could possibly affect an internal app is confusing. I'd guess that at some point it the save one cpu click is saved, then the data is saved and reversed on startup. That all shouldn't affect an running application.

If this app is old then both install with compatibility mode and also run it in compatibility mode and try it again on clean install of windows.

SOLVED - bug in VirtualBox 4.2.18, reverted to 4.1.12, works fine now