virtualbox.org

Hi,

I'm struggling to figure out what is wrong here. I'm on windows 10 1903 Home edition. My Ubuntu 18.04 VM will not start. I get an error message with E_FAIL, MachineWrap, IMachine. I've gone through the post on troubleshooting steps and nothing has worked. Virtualization is enabled in the bios, and all the documented things in the windows features install (Guards, Hyper-V, etc) are disabled. I also ran the bcedit command to disable hyper-V and shutdown/restarted. Any help will be appreciated. I know this has been reported lots of times, none of the solutions i've seen work for me here. Also, I have no A/V installed. Attached is a screen shot of the error and the hardening log.

Thanks,
Joe

I finally figured it out! Finally!
Go in to windows Security and turn off Core Isolation!!!!

Are you and JoeM the same person? If not then it's perhaps a bit early to declare a one-size-fits-all cure.

See FAQ: Diagnosing VirtualBox Hardening Issues.

Hi, thanks for the try. Core isolation is Off on my computer.

Joe

JoeM wrote:I also ran the bcedit command to disable hyper-V and shutdown/restarted

One thing folks sometimes miss is this from the instructions for the bcdedit command:

Fully power down and then restart your host

Also look here: I have a 64bit host, but can't install 64bit guests the 2nd & 3rd posts:

Make sure to fully power down and reboot

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
followed by a cold boot, i.e. shut down the computer, pull the power plug for 10 {seconds}, reboot.

The full power loss seems to be the essential item. I'd leave it for a minute, to be sure all the capacitors are drained out...

Hi,

Yes I did that. I flipped off the power switch on the power supply, and pulled the plug and left it off for 5 minutes.

Thanks,
Joe

Also full disclosure, i do have WSL installed. However, I think that at this point with Windows 1903, it's still WSL 1.x right? WSL 2 hasn't been released to the masses yet?

I did not see anything obvious in the hardening log either. Maybe someone else who knows the details of the log could spot something.

Joe

A quick google:

windows 10 1903 wsl 1 or 2

reveals some folks saying it is #2. Meaning it could be stealing VT-x completely,, see the 64-bit guests post #3, meaning...

OK, well, I again did the full shutdown, power off of power supply and pulled the plug and left it off for 5 minutes. This time, after reboot the VM's start up fine. Sigh... This whole thing seems stupid that it's happening to so many people. It seems like this hardening feature should be something you can disable for people having these kinds of problems. I wasted hours on this yesterday.

@scottgus1 thanks for that suggestion, which led me to try this again since it was the only variable that was not binary.

Joe

This actually isn't the hardening problem. It just happens to be shown up during hardening. Microsoft has made Windows 10 a seriously moving target, constantly adding new features that use Hyper-V, and they way Hyper-V uses VT-x is really heavy-handed, hogging it all the time instead of letting the other children play. Thus the trouble for programs like Virtualbox.

Hardening is essential on Windows hosts because of the way Windows lets one program's DLLs sneak into other programs. It's one of the reasons malware is so prevalent on Windows. Lots of good programs can do it, so can some bad ones. Virtualbox and other virtualizers punch lots of holes in the security structure of a modern PC to allow more than one OS use the hardware, and it's a great vector for malware to run rough-shod over the PC. Seeing as Virtualbox doesn't want to be the go-to software for the malware community, they have to harden on Windows hosts.

Yeah, clearly MS is the source of the problem here. Thanks for the help.

For others who read this, the thing that actually worked for me was:

1) from an elevated windows shell (run as administrator): bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
2) Power down the box, unplug, let it sit for a minute (Though i had to do this part twice for some reason)
3) Reboot

Joe

Finally something that worked. Almost. Needed this also:

4) Admin cmd line: sc start vboxdrv

Since both of those tips are in the FAQ referenced in the first reply, I do wonder what that "finally" refers to.