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I'm attempting to get an Xubuntu VM running with VirtualBox 5.2.14 on Windows 7 (Lenovo E550). I downloaded an Xubuntu iso which I believe is 32bit (18.04-desktop-i386).

Here were my VM settings. Default if not mentioned.

  • Type: Linux
  • Version: Ubuntu (32-bit)
  • Motherboard memory: 2048MB
  • Controller(IDE) - Chose my Xubuntu iso as IDE Secondary Master
  • Controller(SATA) - Made a 6GB vdi file and pointed to that

The problem

I can get into the Xubuntu boot menu fine with these settings, but upon selecting 'Try Xubuntu without installing', 'Install Xubuntu' or 'Check disk for defects', I get a permanent black screen with a blinking cursor (no input is possible though). 'Boot from first hard disk' fails immediately, probably because I'm trying to boot from a CD on the VM. The 'Test memory' menu works, but I don't know what it would avail me.

What I've Tried

Heeding an amalgam of internet advice, I tried both 'Try Xubuntu without installing' and 'Install Xubuntu' with the 'nomodeset' option selected beforehand. I also tried both with 'quiet splash' replaced with 'text' in the boot options. None of these permutations changed the behavior I was seeing.

I also tried with a second download of the Xubuntu 18.04 32-bit iso from a different source with no change in results.

I also tried a download Xubuntu 18.04 64-bit, but I couldn't find a 'Version' setting that didn't give me an error message when attempting to start ("This kernel requires and x86-64 CPU, but only detected an i686 CPU"). I am not sure how to change my settings to get the 64-bit setup past this.

Is there anything else I can troubleshoot here? I'm new to setting up VMs so it's possible I missed something simple.

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  • I tried with PAE unticked and did indeed get the warning instead of the black screen, so I think that setting wasn't the problem. I tried the whole thing again with a linuxmint 32-bit iso and used the 'forcepae' option, but got the same black screen in any case. Do you have a recommendation for a particular older Linux OS? I am ultimately trying to simply set up a Java dev environment.
    – Empty Set
    Commented Jul 8, 2018 at 14:38

1 Answer 1

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I figured this out. I did not enable VT (Virtualization Technology) on my Lenovo E550, which has it off by default. I enabled it in my case by following this tutorial: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht500006

VirtualBox does not seem to warn about this, but I tried the same setup in VMWare and it gave me the clue I needed with an error message. After enabling VT, my initial configuration worked flawlessly.

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