What's wrong with this virtualbox machine

Question

I've downloaded virtualbox, created a machine and installed a ubuntu image on it. Everything goes fine, until it's time to reboot the machine at the end of installation. It reboots into a blank screen, no errors, and no further prompts, just a blank screen. I'm not sure how to trouble shoot this. Can someone give me some hints?

I'm on Windows7, the latest virtualbox 4.1.4 and ubuntu-11.10-server-i386.iso.

I'm on a 64-bit machine, but when I use server-amd64.iso it complains about kernel problems and doesn't begin installing the OS. So this is why I'm using the server-i386.iso

Answer 1

If only blank screen appears, even "Press F12 to select boot device" message is not shown, you have problems with virtuabox installation, try reinstalling it. Try to temporary disable antivirus/firewall on host machine(first one can break virtualbox work, second one can disable local RDP connection, used by virtualbox to display host screen).

Look at VM log files, their place and format are described here

Answer 2

The newer versions of Ubuntu uses a framebuffer that has problems with many older video cards and virtualizers.

Hold left shift while booting. Edit grub's boot line, and remove quiet splash. Boot up and edit /etc/default/grub/ to make the changes permanent.