VBox on Windows 11 kernel panic - unable to sync on every VM

[David from Sarasota FL]

Hi,

I am running VBox 6.1 on a Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 on a Dell Inspiron with a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 2.42 GHz processor.

I am getting a kernel panic - not syncing error. I have verified my Hyper-V setting is disabled and am getting this problem both on a standard distribution of Ubuntu and an image my company has as a baseline.

Interestingly, this system was working fine last night when I left the office and was scrogged this morning. I have uninstalled and reinstalled VBox repeatedly, wiping out all traces of the prior installation and of course cold rebooted multiple times. Every 'fix' I have found on the internet isn't applicable and I can't find a relevant bug report on the website so here I am.

I am attaching the VBox.log file for both the Ubuntu VM and the Quectel SDK which is the VM our company uses to develop. Thank you in advance for your help!!

David

[David from Sarasota FL]

VBox.log for development VM

[David from Sarasota FL]

VBox log for current Ubuntu distribution

[David from Sarasota FL]

VBox log for current Ubuntu distribution

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Your Windows 11 install has the hypervisor itself enabled somehow... the log shows

00:00:02.591516 HM: HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM: VT-x is not available
00:00:02.647880 NEM:  info: Found optional import WinHvPlatform.dll!WHvQueryGpaRangeDirtyBitmap.
00:00:02.647936 NEM: WHvCapabilityCodeHypervisorPresent is TRUE, so this might work...

The usual reasons why it is enabled (without you having enabled Hyper-V) is that your Windows 11 config uses the HVCI feature (a.k.a. Memory integrity in the Device Guard area), see e.g. ​https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/device-guard/enable-virtualization-based-protection-of-code-integrity (which mostly talks about enabling... guess there is some bias).

That said - VMs in VirtualBox should work when the Windows Hypervisor is enabled, but any seriously complicated software has bugs, and this is an entirely different code path than when VirtualBox uses its own hypervisor code which isn't possible when Microsoft's is active.

[David from Sarasota FL]

Thank you very much. I had to disable two more functions but now it works like a beast.

Sorry I did't get back to you sooner. I was up and running immediately and dove into my work.

[lifeishard]

If this helps someone since I just went through this. I turned off the following going to Turn Windows features on or off

• Virtual Machine Platform
• Windows Hypervisor Platform

And now it is working. However, WSL2 will stop working. If anyone knows any solution for both please comment.

Thanks.

[Nils]

I tried this, but still get kernel panics. Hyper-V off, Virtual Machine Platform off, even WSL off, and still get the kernel panics. Anything I am missing here? There is a discussion on ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=105570

[sukrutha]

Turn off : Virtual Machine Platform, Windows Hypervisor Platform, Hyper-V. This works like a charm for running VM on Windows 11! Thanks for this!

But, Disabling "Virtual Machine Platform" does not allow me to run Docker.

Is there a more permanent solution?

[sukrutha]

According to the above solution, you need to turn off "Windows Hypervisor Platform" as well.

Replying to Nils:

I tried this, but still get kernel panics. Hyper-V off, Virtual Machine Platform off, even WSL off, and still get the kernel panics. Anything I am missing here? There is a discussion on ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=105570