virtualbox.org

I am trying to run Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit on a Windows 8 64 bit host running VirtualBox 4.2.6 r82870. I am unable to get even to the install screen for Ubuntu. I have downloaded VirtualBox and Ubuntu from the official websites. Here's some of the details:

VirtualBox: 4.2.6 r82870
Guest additions installed: Didn't reach that stage
Host: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit v6.2 Build 9200 (fresh install without any OEM bloatware)
Guest: Ubuntu 12.10 (ubuntu-12.10-desktop-i386.iso)
Host memory: 8GB
Guest memory: 2GB
Logs: Attached

The boot up just freezes at some point and stays like that, until I finally have to kill it. I've already tried the suggestions in some of the other threads, including increasing guest memory, enabling IO APIC etc. without any results. The error message in the attached screenshot is the only external warning that I get of anything being wrong. I disabled USB as well as audio for the guest, again without any result. CPU usage or memory doesn't seem to be the bottleneck - I have a decently powerful new rig.

I have tried it without Hyper-V active, and it's still the same. However, the same version of Ubuntu runs almost perfectly in Hyper-V, except the lack of any guest additions makes it somewhat harder to work.

I am open to any suggestions. Any ideas? Thank you.

-Sameer

P.S.: No, plugging the charger did not help either.

IMHO, best guess is that it's an Ubuntu problem - it doesn't want to run with the hardware described in your VM recipe. I notice that you have no VT-x, so that catches my eye given that it's a 64bit Windows8 host. Unfortunately I don't know enough about Linux to know what new assumptions it makes about hardware.

ps. Note that this is the "Windows Host" forum, so prolonged discussion of how to configure a Linux guest would be off topic here. Let me know if you want the topic moved.

Thanks for your inputs! There's a couple of reasons I think this is a Windows host issue and not a Linux guest one.

1. The exact same problem appeared suddenly one fine morning after I upgraded my Windows 7 PC to Windows 8 back in September. I had the VM running fine for 2 months before that, and then one day, it just refused to boot up. I was hoping that some revision to VirtualBox after September might have fixed some issue with Windows 8, even though I didn't see anything specific in the changelog. So I gave it a shot again yesterday without any success.
2. I went back 3 versions of Ubuntu and tried all of them on my current configuration. None of them boot up, so it's probably not a regression in one of the newer versions of Ubuntu.
3. Ubuntu runs just fine on Hyper-V on Windows 8 (but it gets messy without the right resolution and window size).

I will try to locate a Windows DVD, see if that works as a guest and update this thread. Meanwhile, if you still think this is a Linux issue, I will appreciate it if you could move it to a different forum where it's likely to get more attention.

Thank you once again.

-Sameer

s1m55r wrote:3. Ubuntu runs just fine on Hyper-V on Windows 8

Is Hyper-V still installed on your Windows 8 host? Afaik it grabs VT-x so that VBox cannot use it.

No need to move just yet. Means that hyper-v is installed on the host and since there can only be one process at a time using this VirtualBox can not access the necessary instructions.

You can use VBox with Hyper-v but only with 32-bit guests. Since hyper-v is enabled at boot you need to disable that or simply remove hyper-v. No other option will work the way Microsoft has decided to block access for other virtualizers by this approach.

Note: software virtualization with VirtualBox is really slow and will appear to stop at times. I have seen boot times of 15 to 20 minutes depending on the OS.

That did the trick! Thanks you very much. I'm not sure what I missed that last time when I thought I ran VirtualBox without Hyper-V active. My bad!

-Sameer