VBoxManage: error: VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR. (VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED)

Today I wanted to add a new 64bit virtual machine to my VirtualBox installation but when I tried to power it on I got the following error message:

root@debian /home/vms/Webserver # VBoxManage startvm Webserver --type headless
Waiting for VM "Webserver" to power on...
VBoxManage: error: VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR. (VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component Console, interface IConsole, callee

The VirtualBox forum lists two prerequisites for using hardware virtualization in your VMs:

  1. a 64bit processor, which apparently I had: 
    root@debian /home/vms/Webserver # lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
  2. hardware virtualization has to be enabled in the host’s BIOS, which as it turned out I didn’t have: 
    root@debian /home/vms/Webserver # modprobe msr
root@debian /home/vms/Webserver # rdmsr 0x3a
1

    (here’s a German description of the command above: Virtualisierungsfunktion Intel VT aktivieren)

After enabling the hardware virtualization feature (VT-X) in the host’s BIOS and restarting it, the VM could be powered on.

Über Stefan

Polyglot Clean Code Developer

2 Kommentare

  1. log4jp
    26. November 2012 um 16:53:14

    Hi,

    today I had the same problem, but with the 32bit Ubuntu Edition. In my case this problem occured because I’ve chosen 4096 ram in the setup. After some tries I found your article, but didn’t want to change something in my bios so I decided to try some other settings. After switching to 2,5 GB of Ram it worked.

    Greetings

  2. Thomas
    20. Dezember 2012 um 14:14:09

    Hi,
    today i had the same problem as log4jp.
    With 4096 Ram the VM didnt started. I changed it to 3072 and i worked fine. Dont know why Virtual Box dont run with 4069 Ram

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