VirtualBox fails to load VM with code E_FAIL (0x80004005)

Question

I'm using the latest version of VirtualBox 6.0.4 r128413 (Qt5.6.2) trunning on x64 Windows 10. Had been running a Windows XP guest for this morning, then shut it down. After an unrelated update to a Visual Studio installation, the VM now will not start with the following error:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine WindowsXP.

The virtual machine 'WindowsXP' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code -1073741819 (0xc0000005).  More details may be available in 'H:\VMs\WindowsXP-Dev\WindowsXP\Logs\VBoxHardening.log'.

Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: MachineWrap
Interface: IMachine {5047460a-265d-4538-b23e-ddba5fb84976}

The VBoxHardening.log is incomprehensible, but I do note this question has a similar problem, though with a much older version of VB.

What is going on? How do I force VB to abandon the check for DLL versions?

Answer 1

This is very normal behavior if you have saved a session and then update VirtualBox.

You need to trash that active session, then it should work again. Also, make sure you update the extension pack for your new version, or this error will pop up too.

Answer 2

Can you please check whether you have installed Hyper-V on your system? I have handled systems where the Hyper-V framework was affecting the functionality of other virtualization frameworks.

You will need to check your Windows features, remove it completely, restart the system and check whether your VM is working.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/application-management/virtualization-apps-not-work-with-hyper-v

Answer 3

Make sure your disk image file name is the same as the machine name.

If the problem still persists then go ahead with @Panos answer and disable Hyper -V, it seems that windows hyper-v blocks Virtualbox.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/application-management/virtualization-apps-not-work-with-hyper-v

Answer 4

This is an old question, but I would like to add an answer anyway for the record.

I got a similar error message from VirtualBox, with the error code 0x80004005:

I tried several of the tips found on the Internet, but none of them worked (like switching off/on Hyper-V). I checked the VirtualBox log for this VM and I found some errors like this:

00:07:59.969106 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxDRMClient: unable to lock PID file (VERR_ACCESS_DENIED), exiting

I suspected an access right was missing, so I checked the ownership and access rights of the directory where the VM is residing (found under Settings/General/Advanced). It turned out my user account was not the owner of the folder and its files. The reason being that I had upgraded my OS version recently, effectively moving the hard disk to a new computer. So the owner was still my "old self". After setting the ownership and access rights, I could start the VM alright.

In my case, I had upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and used VirtualBox 7.0. But I reckon the problem may occur with different versions as well.