Black Screen Flashing Cursor at Startup - Win10 64 Bit Guest and Host

[Eager Liver]

I created new Virtbox Windows 10 64 Bit VM from a VHD file as disk.

When I startup it seems like it doesn't boot and does not get past the Black Screen with the flashing cursor.

I have checked for Hyper V and it is not enabled. What I do no notice is a Red Exclamation Point beside the status of Expansion Pack in Preferences.

[mpack]

Please provide a VM log file. Make sure the VM is fully shut down, then right click it in the manager UI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

[Eager Liver]

Log File is attached

[mpack]

First, this host cannot afford to give 4GB+128MB RAM to a VM, as 4GB is everything you have left after running the host OS, and you can't leave the host with 0 bytes of working RAM if you expect stability. I would reduce the VM RAM allocation to 2048MB.

Apart from that I see no problem with the VM. It's the guest that doesn't attempt to boot, not something in the VM which prevents it. If this image was migrated from an ASUS machine as the name seems to indicate then it's quite possible that it requires an ASUS BIOS or security key, which it will not find in a VirtualBox VM.

I suggest that you get yourself a proper Win10 license to use in VMs, and install it from a proper installer ISO.

[Eager Liver]

I had initially had a much lower assigned 2Gb RAM to the Guest because I thought it may have been a RAM issue. My host has total of 8Gb Ram so I was sure I was leaving enough resources. My Win 7 64bit is working with 128Mb video.

I successfully created Win7 64 bit Virtualbox Guest of same Asus Laptop.

I then upgraded that Laptop to Win 10 and tried to create a VIrtualbox Guest. That Laptop was running Experience Pack version of Win10 and License Activation status is shown as "Digital Key" when I created the VHD.

[mpack]

My host has total of 8Gb Ram

It does not matter what your total RAM is. What does matter is the amount still available for use at the time you launch the VM. If you look near the top of the log posted above it shows that ~4GB was available. So allocating 4GB to the VM leaves 0B available. Obviously too close for comfort, hence my 2048MB suggestion. The latter should be enough.

[Eager Liver]

What I see is 4 Gb RAM Available:

00:00:04.622060 VirtualBox VM 6.1.40 r154048 win.amd64 (Oct 11 2022 14:43:48) release log
00:00:04.622066 Log opened 2023-02-02T01:53:47.413798500Z
00:00:04.622066 Build Type: release
00:00:04.622069 OS Product: Windows 10
00:00:04.622070 OS Release: 10.0.19045
00:00:04.622071 OS Service Pack:
00:00:04.874496 DMI Product Name: 3238AJ8
00:00:04.879035 DMI Product Version: ThinkCentre M92p
00:00:04.879053 Firmware type: BIOS
00:00:04.879062 Host RAM: 7987MB (7.8GB) total, 4161MB (4.0GB) available <<----------

I did initially try the 2Gb Ram setting at first.

[Eager Liver]

Okay. Attached is Log of my VM when configured to use 2 Gb RAM (2048 Mb). Is there anything else that explains why doesn't work.?

Thanks

[mpack]

Is there anything else that explains why doesn't work.?

Again, that is something I touched on in my second post (the first post after I had a log to work with).

[multiOS]

The first Log showed:

00:00:05.216275 ********************* End of CFGM dump **********************
00:00:05.216393 HM: HMR3Init: VT-x w/ nested paging and unrestricted guest execution hw support

but the second shows:

00:00:09.682932 ********************* End of CFGM dump **********************
00:00:09.683084 HM: HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM: VT-x is not available
00:00:10.134448 NEM: info: Found optional import WinHvPlatform.dll!WHvQueryGpaRangeDirtyBitmap.
00:00:10.134570 NEM: WHvCapabilityCodeHypervisorPresent is TRUE, so this might work...

Has Hyper-V been enabled on the Host PC since the first log? If not, then something else is now blocking VirtualBox's access to VT-x so some firmware/software change seems to have been introduced.

[Eager Liver]

Only difference I \can think of is that for some reason my Windows 10 License lost activation for which I just re-activated yesterday. The previous Logs were generated when starting VM guest when Host didn't have Win10 Activation. Other than that the only other difference is the 2Gb RAM instead of the 4 previously assigned for Guest.

Hyper V. I had made sure that Hyper-V was NOT enabled.

I have NO problem starting my Win7 VM Guest.

[multiOS]

Only difference I \can think of is that for some reason my Windows 10 License lost activation for which I just re-activated yesterday.

I hope you have not used the same Windows Activation Code on both the Windows 10 Host and the Guest System (VM) as the are separate 'Devices' which require separate Windows Licenses.

Try working carefully through the Guidance thread here to try to deal with the VT-x issue: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=99390

You might need to pay particular attention to whether any VBS (Virtualisation Based Security) features, which make direct use of the Windows Hypervisor platform, have been activated on the Host.

[Eager Liver]

I do want to mention that the Win 7 Guest VM and the Win10 Guest were imaged from the same ACER Laptop and possibly have the same License. But when turining on the WIn10 the WIn 7 was NOT on. Would this be a conflict of License Activation?

[mpack]

If you activate a PC (virtual or not) using a license already used by another PC (virtual or not) then either the new activation will be rejected, or the old activation will be cancelled. That is how activation based license management works. But you really need to contact Microsoft if you want a definitive description of how their licensing system works.