Virtualbox 1.6.x - 2.0 black screen when starting any VM

[netoor]

When starting any (Ubuntu, FreeDos, Windows) virtual machine (either bootable iso image or vdi file) in VirtualBox on Ubuntu 8.04.1 there is only black screen displayed and the VM doesn't start at all. In 1.6.x vesrions a gray background of the bootable image could be seen when it's stopped, in 2.x it's all black. VirtualBox is installed from deb package successfully but isn't working.

PC configuration:

• Intel based motherboard i945G, 1GB, Celeron 2530MHz, S-ATA 80GB, integrated graphics. OS: Ubuntu 8.04.1 (russian)

Threads on the forum, that I've tried with no success (for example IO APIC support,e etc):

• ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=6369
• ​http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9178

[Frank Mehnert]

Sounds like a problem with your graphics drivers. What happens if you

• boot the VM with VBoxSDL -startvm fedora9?
• boot the VM with VirtualBox -startvm fedora9 -rmode image?

[netoor]

to frank: it didn't help. the problem continues..

[Frank Mehnert]

Ok. To rule out the host graphics driver: Could you change your host Xorg setup to use the VESA graphics driver? Edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add a section

  Section "Device"
        Identifier      "vesa"
        Driver          "vesa"
  EndSection

and add the line

  Device "vesa"

to the Screen section of that file. Then restart the X server to ensure the new configuration applies. Check in /var/log/Xorg.log.0 if the vesa driver is indeed used. Note that the graphics performance will be notably slower. Now try to start a VM. Still only a black window?