Starting VM fails with "Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)" error

[davidmichaelkarr]

Since Friday morning, my VirtualBox VMs start up and fail immediately with a "Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)" error.

I note that the error message stated to run "/sbin/rcvboxdrv setup", but "/sbin/rcvboxdrv" does not exist.

Note that I filed most of the details of this problem at ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=77506 .

I think this problem was caused when I attempted a "yum update" on Friday. I noticed a VirtualBox update come through, but around the same time I also had a crash of my laptop (which seemed to also coincide with a hardware failure on my WIfi adapter).

[Frank Mehnert]

Cannot reproduce, these links exist here. Could you uninstall VirtualBox-5.0 and then re-install? There is a slight chance that this happened during an upgrade from an older version.

[davidmichaelkarr]

I assume that uninstalling will preserve the VMs that I've created?

[davidmichaelkarr]

Ok, I uninstalled vbox and installed it. Now, when I start my VM, instead of giving the original error, it now says this:

VT-x is disabled in the BIOS for all CPU modes (VERR_VMX_MSR_ALL_VMX_DISABLED).
Result Code: 
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: 
ConsoleWrap
Interface: 
IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}

I also notice that even though I had set this VM to have more than CPU (I thought it had 2, the VM settings indicate it has only 1, and I also am now unable to change that field, even when the VM is powered down.

[davidmichaelkarr]

Oh, this has to do with virtualization in the BIOS. I remember that when I was diagnosing the Wifi adapter failure, a technician had me reset the BIOS to defaults. I'll look into how to set virtualization in the BIOS.

[davidmichaelkarr]

Turning on vtx in the BIOS helped somewhat, but it didn't go anywhere after the GRUB menu. Then I happened to notice that the "Operating system" changed from "Ubuntu (64-bit)" to "Ubuntu (32-bit)". This happened on both of the VMs I've been using recently. I changed it back to "Ubuntu (64-bit)" and then it started up successfully. Strange.

I appear to be back to normal now.