Win 11 host dies in headless mode (goal: headless rdp access)

[MickMcVirtual]

Hello there,

so I have a problem with connecting to a Win 11 host via rdp. To better understand, here some information about what I want to archive.

Used virtualbox version: 7.16

Goal: To have a running Win 11 host in headless mode on a Ubuntu Server 22.04

Steps that I took so far:
1. Installed the Win 11 system on a Linux Mint system with gui so that I could log in to the Win 11 host and give a fixed ipv4 address
2. Checked with remmina if the Win 11 host is reachable via rdp from the same Linux Mint system (it is)
3. copied the whole directory of the win11 host to the ubuntu server system
4. on the ubuntu server system: vboxmanage registervm /vms/win11/win11.vbox (worked)
5. on the ubuntu system: vboxmanage startvm "win11" -type headless
6. on the ubuntu system: vboxmanage list runningvms

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$ vboxmanage list runningvms
"win11" {77edc37f-a743-4f06-a66a-628f4a9eefd3

7. I then tried to to connect to the client via rdp - this fails.
8. I then checked "vboxmanage list runningvms" again - and the machine apparently died. As I am not that deep into vbox logs, find it attached.

I hope someone can help me to get this fixed.

[granada29]

A couple of things from your log file.

1. VirtualBox VM 7.0.26 - that's getting old. Current release is 7.2.8
2. You don't have enough RAM for the VM as configured. You cannot oversubscribe memory. I'm not sure that Win 11 would run very well (if at all) in 2 GB so you should probably look at adding memory to your host.

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00:00:00.087368 Host RAM: 3646MB (3.5GB) total, 2283MB (2.2GB) available
00:00:00.470506   RamSize           <integer> = 0x0000000100000000 (4 294 967 296, 4.0 GiB)

[MickMcVirtual]

thanks so far for the answer.
I will now move the headless host to another hw basis. I will then write again.

[Boxy]

I assume your Linux Mint runs on a "real system" and VirtualBox runs as level 1 hypervisor.
Is this true for the Ubuntu server too?

Because RAM of 3646 MB seems more like a virtual Ubuntu server:
"00:00:00.087368 Host RAM: 3646MB (3.5GB) total, 2283MB (2.2GB) available"

The "Hyper-V" messages in your log points in the same direction:
"00:00:00.536044 GIM: Using provider 'HyperV' (Implementation version: 0)")
"00:00:40.361329 HVP - Hypervisor Present (we're a guest) = 1 (0)"

And running a hypervisor (VirtualBox) as level 2 below a level 1 hypervisor (e.g. VMWare, QEMU, XEN or KVM) may lead to troubles, if it works at all.

BTW isn't the right/smooth/simple way to take over virtual machines by export/import appliance?

[MickMcVirtual]

OK, I got it running now on another system. But now, I cannot get to my goal: access the vm from another pc via rdp.
When I launch my system headless, I can however access it via vnc, but that's not what I want.

RDP is switched on in the vm itself. When I try to access it from the other pc with "rdp" as protocol and port I did set with --vrdeport, it instantly says that connection is not possible.

On the machine where the vm is running, I get the following:

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17/06/2026 17:43:05 webSocketsHandshake: invalid client header
17/06/2026 17:43:05 Client 192.168.6.144 gone
17/06/2026 17:43:05 Statistics             events    Transmit/ RawEquiv ( saved)
17/06/2026 17:43:05  TOTALS              :      0 |         0/        0 (  0.0%)
17/06/2026 17:43:05 Statistics             events    Received/ RawEquiv ( saved)
17/06/2026 17:43:05  TOTALS              :      0 |         0/        0 (  0.0%)

What may be the cause?