VirtualBox Meditation Guru

[logosnoetico]

Hello,
suddenly my virtual machine on VirtualBox won't start anymore due to a critical Meditation Guru error. I am using VirtualBox on Windows 7.

[scottgus1]

Start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show Log. Save the far left tab's log, zip it, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab, which is available from first day first post.

[logosnoetico]

I hope I have attached it correctly.

[scottgus1]

Thanks for the log!

Your 3rd-party antivirus has enabled its internal setting to use hardware virtualization for its scanning. This setting interferes with Virtualbox. Disable the antivirus setting for hardware virtualization and Virtualbox will probably work fine again.

[logosnoetico]

Solved, that was exactly the problem!

Thank you very much.

[logosnoetico]

The problem occurred again.

[mpack]

The problem occurred again.

Then the Avast/VGA feature is still enabled.

[logosnoetico]

No, it is disabled.

[fth0]

There seem to be several components/settings of Avast/VG software using hardware virtualization. Uninstall Avast/AVG completely, reboot and see if the issue persists.

[logosnoetico]

I uninstalled Avast and now the virtual machine works. Does this mean I need to change antivirus?

[mpack]

Does this mean I need to change antivirus?

If Avast support can't tell you how to make it stop using VT-x/AMD-v, then yes.

[scottgus1]

On a Windows 7 host, you'll probably need a 3rd-party AV. You could hunt through Avast's settings to look for anything that uses hardware virtualization (might need some web-search, since they may not explicitly state that they are using hardware virtualization behind a setting). Avast and AVG will give you the same problems, as they are now also owned by the same company.

One user recommeded turning off the anti-rootkit shield:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=106204&p=518832#p518832
Also see this: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=105778#p519252

We don't necessarily have 3rd-party AV recommendations. One user switched to BitDefender and didn't report probllems afterwards, but that may change. I did have BitDefender on a Virtualbox host once several years ago, and it did use hardware virtualization too, interfering with Virtualbox.

Unless you can upgrade to Windows 10 and use the built-in Windows Defender, which does not interfere with Virtualbox, you'll have to try things and research what to use on Windows 7. If a guru meditation happens, and you search the log for the word "meditation", and VERR_VMM_SET_JMP_ABORTED_RESUME or VERR_VMX_VMXON_FAILED is mentioned in the log for the reason, it's probably the AV.