VM won't start, disabled?

[fnord000]

Hi, I'm having what (to me at least) seems like a very odd problem. I've been running an Ubuntu 11.04 guest under Windows 7 host for a couple weeks now without issue. But now, when I start the VirtualBox Manager, the Ubuntu VM (powered off) appears to be completely disabled. Settings and start is grayed out. The only things that appear in the context menu is "Show Log", "Show in Explorer" and "Create Shortcut on Desktop". Everything else is grayed out. The most recent log looks no different than the previous logs for what it's worth. Creating a shortcut and attempting to start the VM results in a nondescript "Failed to start the virtual machine" error. All other functions of the Manager (New VMs, global settings, etc) seem to be intact, and there were and are no other error messages of any sort displayed by the Manager.

If anyone has any idea of what's going on here, any help would be greatly appreciated. As it is, it doesn't seem like I can do *anything* with the VM - I can't even remove it!

[Sasquatch]

There is a button next to Settings that should note Start. What does it say for you?

[BillG]

Try opening VirtualBox using "run as administrator".

[fnord000]

Thanks for the replies!

Starting VB as administrator did... something.
(Incidentally, starting normally had the top toolbar start button grayed out and unclickable.)

Running as administrator brings back all of the UI elements that were disabled. Unfortunately, while I can click on them now, they don't seem to work. Attempting to start the VM gives me a real error message at least:
___________

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Ubuntu.

The VM session was aborted.

Details

Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: SessionMachine
Interface: ISession {12f4dcdb-12b2-4ec1-b7cd-ddd9f6c5bf4d}
___________

Settings, on the other hand, does nothing - doesn't bring up the settings dialog, and doesn't give any error.

[fnord000]

Creating a new VM and using the old one's vdi effectively recovered the system. Still no idea what happened, but I have a viable workaround now.

[Nicholas Tait]

I ran into this same problem, not sure of the cause. From Ubuntu 13.04 host my Windows 7 guest had the "Show" and "Discard" buttons disabled/greyed out. Other guests appeared unaffected. All my VMs reside on an external hard drive. Closed VirtualBox, unmounted this drive, re-mounted, and opened VirtualBox. All fixed!

[Stacey Anne]

I experienced this problem too, while using VboxManage to start my virtual machine.

The error I received was as follows:

VBoxManage: error: The machine 's_cen6.5' is already locked by a session (or being locked or unlocked)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_INVALID_OBJECT_STATE (0x80bb0007), component Machine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "LaunchVMProcess(a->session, sessionType.raw(), env.raw(), progress.asOutParam())" at line 592 of file VBoxManageMisc.cpp

In the GUI, the problem presented itself in the same way as described above. The virtual machine was described as "Powered off" in the GUI and the start button was greyed out.

The problem was fixed by restarting the machine on which virtualbax was running (not ideal by any stretch of the imagination).

[mpack]

"Invalid Object State" usually means it can't restore a saved state, usually meaning that you upgraded the software while the guest was in a suspended state. You need to discard the saved state from the GUI before the VM will launch.

[practicalidealist]

I had the same problem wherein the Start button next to the Settings button on the toolbar was disabled / greyed out. Going through the logs helped me realise that there was at least one other Virtual Box process still running in memory. Once I killed all the hanging processes, I was able to restart the VM without any further ado.

HTH.

[Flyby]

Same problem, praticalidealist solved it, VM status changed to aborted, but I was able to restart it and everything returned to normal.

Thank you.

Regards.