virtualbox.org

Hey guys,

I am trying to run an Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Virtual Machine using VirtualBox. It seems to be mostly running fine, but on occasion (a little over half the time) it freezes during startup and must be entirely restarted. This can occur any time while the system is booting up, or even right when it starts. I have noticed that if it boots and then freezes, the clock does still update, but I cannot see my mouse or use my keyboard at all. I currently have 4096 MB base memory, 4 virtual processors, and 20 GB for the virtual hard drive (which should be ample for running Ubuntu, I haven't even installed anything on it yet and I did the minimal installation, not normal). I've tried the following unsuccessfully: toggling Enable PAE/NX, changing Paravirtualization Interface from Default to Minimal, and toggling Enable Nested Paging. I can't find any other advice online for resolving this, does anyone have any idea what would be causing this weird freezing issue? I'm relatively new to VirtualBox, so if there are any logs or data I can export that would help, let me know.

Thanks!!
Charles

All the 'trying the following' often breaks stuff. It's called thrashing, and it does worse most of the time.

Please start a new Ubuntu VM. Let the New VM wizard pick all the settings, except for 30GB drive, 2 processors and 2GB RAM. Then try to install and boot the OS.

If your VM has problems, 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.

I was concerned that messing with those settings could be dangerous haha I completely reinstalled VirtualBox and Ubuntu and it seems to happen a lot less frequently, but it still does happen on occasion. Since my mouse and keyboard no longer function when Ubuntu freezes I was unable to shutdown from within the VM, but here are the logs you requested. I started the VM from a Powered Off state and it froze on the black screen right after the Ubuntu startup screen goes by.

Thanks again for the help!!
Charles

Thanks for the log! It contains this text:
Attempting fall back to NEM
which means Hyper-V is enabled on the host. You have two options:

1. Try the 6.1.35 test build. Save the test build installer until you update again later. You'll need it if your host's MSI installation database goes south (they do) and the installer will not be available for download after the next even-number version gets released.

2. Turn off Hyper-V. See HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM (Hyper-V is active).

cafleck wrote:I completely reinstalled VirtualBox

Reinstalling VirtualBox does not change existing VM configurations (if it did then it would make updating a tad troublesome), so this probably did nothing unless you did a step you forgot to mention, like deleting all your VMs!

Hey guys,

Interesting that VirtualBox doesn't actually delete everything when you uninstall it, that's good to know for the future. Completely disabling Hyper-V seems to have solved all of my troubles though, so it looks like I'm good for now!!

Thanks again for the help!!
Charles

cafleck wrote:VirtualBox doesn't actually delete everything when you uninstall it, that's good to know for the future.

A program that also deletes all of the user's documents when uninstalling wouldn't get very far without some pushback.

Glad you're up and running!

I just ran a virtual machine on similar memory and storage resources successfully. I did not create the physical space however.