Keyboard input breaks during installation of Ubuntu 20.04

[dabe]

As in the title, I am creating a new VM and trying to install Ubuntu 20.04 64-bit on my Windows 10 Home host, and all text input stops working at the same point in the installation no matter what I do.

Steps to reproduce problem:
- Install fresh VBox latest version, no pre-existing user settings or VMs
- Install Guest Additions
- Create new VM with all default settings for Ubuntu 64-bit
- Increase RAM to 8 GB, CPU cores to 4, video memory to 128 (although the same problem happens on the lower, default settings)
- Run VM and point to fresh download of Ubuntu image
- Go through installation steps with keyboard and mouse working, all default settings
- Get to section about erasing disk
- Select advanced options and turn on disk encryption

At this point, Keyboard input, both hard and software, stops working, even if I go back to previous steps where it was working. It's to the point where I can't even select text boxes for input, but I can still click around with my mouse.

Sometimes, it will randomly freeze on some part before this step, but those steps have been the most consistent problem.

My VM was working perfectly fine until I installed: WSL-2, Docker, and Vagrant, all of which have been uninstalled/disabled with their user settings deleted and VBox reinstalled completely fresh with multiple computer restarts. I can't even get input through over a remote display connection.

Trying to install in safe graphics mode also freezes during installation.

I've also tried to install 18.04, and similar thing happens to my mouse, where the UI responds to my mouse but does not receive clicks anymore. I can continue the installation with just my keyboard until I enter my encryption key and I get "An error occurred while configuring encrypted volumes." If I do the installation without encryption it hangs after it tells me it will make changes to the disk and I accept.

I'm totally stumped on how to proceed. I want to avoid reinstalling Windows as that just seems like overkill.

[dabe]

Turns out it was WSL-2.

Even though I had uninstalled Ubuntu for Windows and disabled WSL, I had to still disable VirtualMachinePlatofrm, as I guess this just completely breaks Vbox

So all I had to do was run

Code: Select all

Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

Enable WSL-2 with caution!

[scottgus1]

Good that you kept hunting for a solution!

WSL-2 enables Hyper-V, which most of the time causes trouble for Virtualbox.

Your command is one of the ways to kill off Hyper-V. Also see I have a 64bit host, but can't install 64bit guests