[NotSupported] "VT-x is not available (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX)..."

[ant]

Hello.

I just upgraded my VirtualBox from its v6.0.14 (virtualbox-6.0_6.0.14-133895~Debian~jessie_amd64.deb) to v6.1 in my over decade old Debian Jessie v8 PC (2 GB of RAM). I was unable to start my old 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP3 guest VM due to this error:

VT-x is not available (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: ConsoleWrap
Interface: IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}"

https://i.ibb.co/8BxdbfH/vb61.gif for a screen shot/capture of it in action.
https://i.ibb.co/NjYJRJF/vtx.gif of the VT-X setting unchecked and gr(a/e)yed out.
Previous versions had no problems.

PC's details: Intel Core 2 Q8200 (quad-core; default clock speeds; Socket 775 LGA) with a Scythe Andy Master 120mm CPU cooler (SCASM-1000), Antec Sonata Proto mid tower ATX case, MSI P43 NEO3-F (MSI-7514) motherboard (latest BIOS), two 1 GB of Crucial RAM (Samsung DDR2 800 (PC2-6400; 400 MHz), EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT PCIE video card (512 MB of VRAM), onboard RealTek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet and RealTek audio, 600 watts Sea Sonic S12 PSU, ASUS TV Tuner Card 880 NTSC (cx23880), Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model DVR-218LBK LabelFlash Support, 3.5" floppy disk drive, Corsair Force Series F115 Solid-State Disk (SSD) (115 GB; CSSD-F115GB2-BRKT-A), Western Digital Corporation (WDC) WD20EZRX-00D8PB0 SATA 2 TB HDD for storage/backup/secondary, Sabrent USB2+memory card reader front panel, and an Intel InBusiness 10/100 (82559) NIC (not connected). Running 64-bit Debian (Linux; oldoldstable v8/Jessie; kernel v3.16... x86_64).

Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon.

[scottgus1]

The changelog for 6.1.0 (it's 6.1.0, btw, 6.1 will cover a lot of minor versions for a couple years) says:

Virtualization core: Drop recompiler, i.e. running VMs now needs a CPU supporting hardware virtualization

Thus 6.1.0 et al will require VT-x on a host PC. A quick Google on your CPU "Intel Core 2 Q8200" shows:

Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x)    No

So you cannot run 6.1.0 on that PC. Have to go back to 6.0.whatever-you-were-running.

[ant]

Aw. No more newer VB versions on this old PC.

It would be nice if VirtualBox tells users that it doesn't work on this hardware anymore (not the technical message) before starting up the guest VMs. Anyways, I just downgraded back to the previous version and its tools to use it again.

[scottgus1]

It would be nice if VirtualBox tells users that it doesn't work on this hardware anymore

Probably too many combinations to cross check whether the cause is the CPU family/version, or something else.

Besides, that's what we're here for

[Martin]

It would be nice if VirtualBox tells users that it doesn't work on this hardware anymore

Well, it was listed in the release notes:

• Virtualization core: Drop recompiler, i.e. running VMs now needs a CPU supporting hardware virtualization

[ant]

Who read those? I was referring in the program to warn users before starting VMs.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation and https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserM ... quirements should be updated for those who read them too.

[socratis]

Marking as [NotSupported].