Unable to run virtualmachine - vbox amd-v

Question

I just received my new Thinkpad E545 and would love to set up a new virtual machine for development. After creating the appliance and adding the #! iso for installation, I tried to start up the machine and I get the following error:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine CrunchBang.

AMD-V is disabled in the BIOS (or by the host OS). (VERR_SVM_DISABLED).

Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole {8ab7c520-2442-4b66-8d74-4ff1e195d2b6}

I did some searching and found this thread (https://askubuntu.com/questions/118006/amd-v-is-not-enable-in-virtualbox-in-amd-apu) and followed the advice about enabling virtualization in my bios, but I still get the same results from virtualbox, even after re-installing. After enabling virtualization in the bios, the acceleration tab in vbox is still not available (greyed-out and un-clickable).

Screenshot: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nzLlv.png

Relevant laptop specs:

Processor           AMD A10-5750M Accelerated Processor (2.5GHz to 3.5GHz, 4MB Cache, 1600MHz) with Radeon HD 8650G Graphics

Operating System        Windows 8 64

Operating System Language   Windows 8 64 English

Display             15.6W HD AntiGlare, Midnight Black

Graphics            AMD Radeon HD 8570M 2GB Discrete Graphics

Memory              16GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600MHz SODIMM

Keyboard            Keyboard with Number Pad - US English

Camera              720p HD Camera

Hard Drive          320GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm

Optical Device          DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer

Answer 1

Judging by a sudden spike in forum posts and Stack Overflow questions about this precise error code (VERR_SVM_DISABLED) starting right about when 4.3 came out, I'm willing to bet that this is a legitimate bug in 4.3.

I've triple-checked my BIOS settings and AMD-V is enabled...but I'm still seeing this error in 4.3.10. I never had this problem on 4.2.18.

And this bug report might be good additional reading: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12049

Answer 2

You can simply change the Virtal machine from 64-bit to 32-bit

Answer 3

Sorry, that I am so late, but at least someone else will be able to use my advice.

In the latest version of BIOS for this model (have the same one) they mixed up the setting: ENABLING amd-v DISABLES it.

Or this could be some bug of VirtualBox as stated above, however this worked for me.

Answer 4

I've just discovered that having hyper-V installed seems to prevent certain virtualisation features (such as 64 bit) being available to virtualbox. Switching hyper-V off (via add/remove windows features) fixed this for me.