Spinning Wheel on Virtual Box on OS X host: Solved

This won't solve everyone's issue with the spinning wheel in Mac OS X on VirtualBox, but it solved mine. Ran into an issue trying to install a new host on Virtualbox. For a brief instant I saw the contents of the folder containing the ISO, then the folder contents interface went white and the spinning wheel (system busy) mouse cursor began. When I went to use an ISO for a DVD / CD image after this hang, I kept seeing the spinning rainbow wheel from Mac OS X. I tried the following steps, all still having the spinning wheel effect on interaction with the Finder:

• Force quit the application and attempted access again after killing all VirtualBox processes.
• Shutdown the host machine completely (in case of a USB bus hang).
• I deleted the VM and started a new one in the default location.
• Rebuilt the directories on the system using Disk Warrior.
• Tried to create a VM on a different volume (testing for corrupt SSD)
• Changed permissions on the ISO.
• Updated VirtualBox from 4.26 to 4.28

With the Finder window open and spinning I went back to the last successful location (that I saw for a split instance) and reviewed the directory contents in the terminal. In my past experience with various programs, it's often something external of the program that could cause this sort of behavior. Programmers rarely have the time to take into account every possible glitch they could encounter. Usually on a Mac, since they're frequently used for graphic design, this can be a font someone downloaded from the web.

This directory was on a temp drive where I had stored the dmg file I extracted from the Yosemite installation app. Upon further inspection I found a folder in the same directory called "Office Mac Home and Student 2011 - (1 User-3 Installs) (Download) (OLD VERSION)." This folder came from an Amazon.com installer at some point in the past. Files from external sources on my system are always renamed if they contain illegal characters for cross systems when they're not on a temp drive. In this case, I had not bothered to rename the folder since I didn't plan on keeping it.

VirtualBox came back to life upon renaming this folder in the terminal to Office-Mac-Home-2011.

Conclusion: Even though a file or folder on a Mac can be named something, doesn't mean that it should. Often people who write apps for other systems like Linux or UNIX and port them over to the Macintosh OS X  platform would never expect to find the non-standard naming conventions which are possible in Mac OS X. People who have used older versions of Mac OS might have the tendency to use the naming conventions possible under Mac Classic.

Hope this helps somebody.