virtualbox.org

I have been trying to install QIIME 2 using a Virtual Box and experience an issue at the start of step five. At this point a screen loads to a very dark purple screen, which then changes to a black screen with a blinking cursor. No prompt to select the user qiime2 and enter the password Qiime2 ever appears. I have tried following the installation procedure several times so have colleagues who also used QIIME2 with no success.

I'm guessing that you are referring to this: https://docs.qiime2.org/2020.8/install/ ... irtualbox/

Also guessing at this stage, but have you ever installed Hyper-V or used WSL2 on the Windows PC's that present this problem?

In accord with MultiOS's thoughts, try this:

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

Please right-click the guest in the main Virtualbox window's guest list, choose Show Log.

Search the far left tab's log for this text:

Attempting fall back to NEM

If you find it, Hyper-V is enabled and needs to be disabled. See HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM (Hyper-V is active). Version 6.1.16 might fix this. If you're on an earlier version, try it.

If you don't find that text, save the far left tab's log, zip the log file, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.