Why Won’t My VirtualBox VM Work on Windows 10?

This one will be quick, but I felt it was pertinent to get the information stored in one place…

If you are like me and you have a virtual machine that just refuses to start up fully (looking at you Kali Linux post 5.7.0) then the culprit is likely Hyper-V.

Hyper-V and VirtualBox cannot efficiently coexist at this time. Hyper-V requires access to everything.

But Jeremy, I do not see Hyper-V listed in my Windows Features toggle window!

This is probably because you, like me, are using Windows 10 Home edition and are quite possibly using WSLv2. WSLv2 uses Hyper-V. If you have WSLv2 installed, you cannot effectively use VirtualBox, period, on Windows 10.

Luckily the fix is easy, but it will prevent WSLv2 from booting up…

Run the following in an Administrator level Powershell instance:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
shutdown -s -t 2

These commands will 1) disable Hyper-V, and 2) power off your system. Once your system is powered off, flip the power switch on it (or unplug it from the wall) for 20 seconds. After that turn it all back on and your VirtualBox machines should be working much better.

WSLv2 stops working, but that is a small price to pay to use VirtualBox again.

Further Reading: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=98668