Ubuntu – Getting error message when trying to start a virtual machine

virtualbox

I have been using VMWare on Windows for a long time. But after a long wait, I moved to VirtualBox on Ubuntu 11.10. I installed Ubuntu, 32 Bit, installed all available updates and installed Virtual Box. When I try to create a new Windows installation inside VirtualBox, I got the following error messages.

VirtualBox - Error

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows XP.
The virtual machine '**Windows XP**' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1.
Details

Result Code:
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component:
Machine
Interface:
IMachine {5eaa9319-62fc-4b0a-843c-0cb1940f8a91}

2nd error dialogue

Virtualbox - Error in suplibOsinit
Kernal driver not installed (rc--1908)
Please install the virtualbox-dkmbs package and execute 'modprobe vboxdrv' as root.
  • I have already tried reinstalling VirtualBox.
  • Google result seem to indicate the the problem happens due to Kernel updates.

Is there anyway I can get this working? I need this for malware analysis and if VirtualBox is going to crash on me all the time, then I won't be able to use Ubuntu for work.

Output to dpkg -l | grep virtual

 server
rc  virtualbox                             4.1.2-dfsg-1ubuntu1                    
x86 virtualization solution - base binaries
rc  virtualbox-qt                          4.1.2-dfsg-1ubuntu1                    
x86 virtualization solution - Qt based user interface 
cute 'modprobe vboxdrv' as root.<p>

Best Answer

I had the same problem and solved it by

  1. Purging Virtualbox:

    sudo apt-get purge virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-ose-qt virtualbox-qt

  2. I then reinstalled;

    sudo apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-ose virtualbox

    and noticed:

    dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualbox-ose:
virtualbox-ose depends on virtualbox; however:
Package virtualbox is not configured yet.
Package virtualbox-4.0 which provides virtualbox is not installed.

  3. so I tried installing virtualbox-4.0;

    sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.0

    That worked and pulled in the correct VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules.

  4. I then had to download and install the correct version of the extension pack Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.16-75491.vbox-extpack.

That worked, and I now have a fully functioning Virtualbox instance.

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