Resolving issue: Oracle Virtual Box and Windows 10 - Call to WHvSetupPartition failed VERR_NEM_VM_CREATE_FAILED image

Resolving issue: Oracle Virtual Box and Windows 10 – Call to WHvSetupPartition failed VERR_NEM_VM_CREATE_FAILED

Like so many colleagues and fellow developers around the world, the latest Windows Update also messed up my machine’s ability to successfully run Oracle Virtual Box. When running vagrant to provision a VM, I ran into messages such as:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine. Call to WHvSetupPartition failed: ERROR_SUCCESS (Last=0xc000000d/87) (VERR_NEM_VM_CREATE_FAILED).Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)Component: ConsoleWrapInterface: IConsole

When I tried to open a VM in the Oracle Virtual Box GUI that used to run fine before the Windows Update (to Windows 1903), I got a similar error.

Following the instructions in the Forum Thread https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=92453 (and https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=94892) to disable absolutely everything in Windows that has any connection with Hyper-V, I was not able to solve the issue – although I guess these steps are required too – and they seem to be enough for many users:

Make sure none of these Windows Programs or Features are running:

image

Application Guard
Credential Guard
Device Guard
<any> * Guard
Containers
Hyper-V
Virtual Machine Platform
Windows Hypervisor Platform
Windows Sandbox
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)


And to disable Hyper-V from starting the following command can be used:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

A reboot of Windows 10 is necessary. And sometimes to be sure a cold reboot and even more than one.

Thanks to my colleague, André van Winssen, I learned about these steps that finally resolved my situation:

  1. go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53337 and download the ” Device Guard and Credential Guard hardware readiness tool “
  2. unzip it.
  3. start powershell as admin in the directory that contains the unzipped archive contents.
  4. run script with parameter -disable (see image below)
    SNAGHTML8a939
  5. reboot the machine; in the boot-sequence, press F3 when prompted to really disable the Device Guard

    image

    press F3. Then press any key to continue.

    image

    Press F3. Then

    image

    Press any key. The reboot continues
  6. after Windows comes back again, I can now run and provision VMs again with Virtual Box

Edit: After update to Windows : December 10, 2019—KB4530684 (OS Builds 18362.535 and 18363.535), my VirtualBox again would not start. Again, my colleague André van Winssen figured out the solution: (basically reiterating through this article):

  1. ensure all Windows Features are turned off that bear any relationship to hypervisor
  2. run the DG_Readiness_Tool_v3.6.ps1 tool in PowerShell as admin
  3. reboot and confirm disabling Virtualization Based Security Opt Out Tool and Credential Guard Opt Out tool

10 Comments

  1. Srini March 26, 2021
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