If VirtualBox opens fine, but when you try to start a virtual machine (VM) you get the following error:
Failed to start the virtual machine Windows XP.
VirtualBox can’t operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE).
… it means another virtualisation package – kvm – is interfering with VirtualBox. kvm isn’t installed on Ubuntu by default, so you probably installed qemu, the popular open-source emulator.
A quick fix is to stop kvm via the terminal:
sudo /etc/init.d/kvm stop
To stop this happening completely, mark the following packages for complete removal in Synaptic if they’re installed: kvm, qemu, qemu-kvm & qemu-launcher. Or you can do it via the terminal, and ignore errors regarding packages that weren’t installed (so can’t be uninstalled):
sudo apt-get remove kvm qemu qemu-kvm qemu-launcher
You should now be able to start your VM, without having to close and restart VirtualBox.
☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻
Did this information make your day? Did it rescue you from hours of headache? Then please consider making a donation via PayPal, to buy me a donut, beer, or some fish’n’chips for my time and effort! Many thanks!
Buy Ubuntu Genius a Beer to say Thanks!
Ubuntu Genius's Blog 