Ubuntu – virtualbox NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)

18.04virtualbox

Yesterday my Virtualbox guests were still running. Today I get the following error for all guests (windows or Linux).

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine win10.

The VM session was closed before any attempt to power it on.

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: SessionMachine
Interface: ISession {7844aa05-b02e-4cdd-a04f-ade4a762e6b7}

I already tried to run sudo /sbin/vboxconfig, reinstalling from Software Manager, reinstalling following Cannot run virtual machines after upgrading virtualbox from 5.0 to 5.1 and upgrading to 5.2.12 r122591 and 5.2.14 r123301. The result was always the same.

My current kernel version is 4.15.0-24-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP.

$ VBoxManage list extpacks
Extension Packs: 1
Pack no. 0:   Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack
Version:      5.2.14
Revision:     123301
Edition:      
Description:  USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Host Controller, Host Webcam, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM, Disk Encryption, NVMe.
VRDE Module:  VBoxVRDP
Usable:       true

Best Answer

I had similar issue on xubuntu 18.04 where my Virtualbox guests was to run windows 7. Although I had Virtualbox 5.2 installed previously that worked.

  1. I made sure that virtualbox-dkms was installed by running this command:

    dpkg -l | grep virtualbox-dkms

  2. Then I purged it and and reinstalled only dkms:

    apt-get purge virtualbox-dkms && sudo apt-get install dkms

  3. Then I ran the suggested command to rebuild the kernel:

    sudo /sbin/vboxconfig

This is what worked for me.

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