An Operating System Was Not Found - repeated issues installing Windows Server 2016 under VirtualBox

[maxxori]

Hi all.

I'm pretty much out of ideas on this so it's finally time to ask someone else for help.

I've been trying to set up a Windows Server 2016 guest installation to do some software testing. The installation seems to be going fine but then seems to stop. From what I can see it gets to a point where it would restart the system and continue, but never continues after the restart. Once the system restarts it gives you an option to boot from the CD. I would usually ignore this as Windows continues to do it's own thing without interference. However once the timer expires it simply brings up a "An operating system wasn't found" error. Rebooting and booting from the ISO image once again does not give the option to continue it either.

The Windows Server 2016 is an ISO downloaded directly from Microsoft and I have downloaded it twice to verify that the image isn't somehow corrupted. I don't know if there are any settings that I need to change or whatnot to ensure that everything runs correctly, so far other than setting the ISO file and default memory allication I've made no changes to the settings.

My host system is running on Windows 10 64-bit.

If anyone has any advice on what to do here, either to help debug this issue or fix it then I would greatly appreciate the help! I have attached the VBox.log file here too, in case that will be of any help.

Cheers.

Max

[scottgus1]

Your log contains these lines:

{timestamp} HM: HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM: VT-x is not available
{timestamp} NEM: WHvCapabilityCodeHypervisorPresent is TRUE, so this might work...

You might notice in the guest window's Status Bar the green turtle: The choice of animal is appropriate: Your guest is running, just really slow. Or it might guru-meditate. This is because a service that uses Microsoft Hyper-V is running on your host PC. Normally Hyper-V blocks Virtualbox. But your PC is of the type and OS where Virtualbox can attempt to run the guest using the Hyper-V engine. This arrangement is still being developed and isn't 100% yet.

If VirtualBox is running without Hyper-V enabled, and nothing else is interfering with hardware virtualization (VT-x / AMD-V), then the usual virtualization icon () will be seen in the Status Bar.

To turn Hyper-V off completely, do this:

1. Shut down all programs. You will have to reboot your host.

2. See I have a 64bit host, but can't install 64bit guests. This tutorial has a couple more things to look for in step 2. Be sure these are all turned off.

3. Find the Command Prompt icon, right click it and choose Run As Administrator.

4. Enter this command:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

5. Enter this command:

shutdown -s -t 2

6. When the computer turns off, unplug it for 20 seconds. Then plug it in again and boot up Windows 10.

If your Virtualbox does not start successfully, zip and post another vbox.log. For further info, see https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/139 ... puter.html

[maxxori]

Hi Scott.

Nothing should be using Hyper-V and in fact the feature is not even installed. Though WSL is actually installed so that might be doing something behind the scenes, even though it's not running at the moment.

If I disable Hyper-V completely then I assume that it will break WSL, and if so that would prove to be another issue for me. Do you happen to know if there is any way around this?

Cheers.

[scottgus1]

The first version of WSL does not use Hyper-V, but the second version WSL2 does.
If you must use WSL and Virtualbox, you can try the final link in the above post, from tenforums.com. They have a tutorial for click-switch-at-boot to enable or disable Hyper-V.

It could be possible that installing the guest OS successfully with Hyper-V off might allow the guest to run successfully with Hyper-V on afterwards. Or the guest might still be crippled. It could also be possible that a Virtualbox guest with Linux could replace WSL in your usage.