Saturday, November 17, 2012

VirtualBox "Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908)" on Mac OSX

I have a Windows virtual machine that I use, and I tried to start it today and received the following error:


After a bit of searching I found a pastebin with the answer, to load the kernel driver run:

sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/VBoxDrv.kext/

Attempting to start the virtual machine progressed a little further, but I was now greeted with:

Not sure what the issue here is… When I try to edit settings I'm greeted with:

Clicking OK allowed me enter the settings, but I couldn't change anything. The solution for me was to discard the saved state for the VM, go into the settings and disable the host-only adapter (not sure if this step was necessary), then boot the VM.

25 comments:

  1. hi Bradley, I had the same problem and updating virtualbox to the newest version (VirtualBox-4.2.4-81684-OSX) made the trick for me

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  2. That's the version I'm running too, and it did indeed fix this problem initially, but for some reason it's reoccurred. It seems like it didn't install properly and after some event (a reboot perhaps?) the kernel module isn't reloaded.

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  3. Thanks you very much, saved me major headaches.

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  4. Thank you very much for sharing this!

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  5. In my case see the foll error:
    MacBook-Pro:$ sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/VBoxDrv.kext/
    /Library/Extensions/VBoxDrv.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) not found; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8).

    I recently upgraded from OS 10.7 to Mavericks. Help ?

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  6. if you have updated to mac os mavericks 10.9 use this:
    sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VirtualBox/LaunchDaemons/VirtualBoxStartup.sh restart

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    1. This worked perfectly, thanks Urvashi, you've saved my day! :)

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    3. Thanks Urvashi, you`ve saved my work day!!!!!!

      ;)

      Regards from Chile

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    4. Thanks for sharing Urvashi and Bradley.

      All the best.

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    6. Worked for me. Using OS X Yosemite and CS50 Appliance.

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    7. Man you're god!! thanks a lot

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    8. u seriourly are a god man, thank you so much

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    9. Thank you for the solution.you saved lot of time

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  7. Urvashi..it worked for me as well..Thanks!

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  8. Hey, I have the same problem, but nothing of the commands are working. The command of Urvashi does not exists on my Mac. I have Yosemite.

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  9. I noticed that you posted a lot of what I'm experiencing too, however I am also getting a different error.

    Current VBox version: 4.3.26 r98988
    Current OSX ver: 10.10.3

    but when I tried what was suggested in this thread - it gave an error with the same error as before (VERR_GENERAL_FAILURE)

    UPDATE: 30 mins later after reinstalling the current oracle version (I previously installed the Sun version with no success). I decided to run the VM to see what error code it would provide. However this time the VM spun up with no issues.

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  10. Upgrade to EI Capitan and using command sudo kextload "/Library/Application support/VirtualBox/VBoxDrv.kext" and received the below error.

    ''''The system extension "VBoxDrv.kext" is not compatible with this version of OS X and can’t be used.
    Please contact the developer for updated software.''''

    Suggest someone right command for using in EI Capitan. Is this really not supported in latest OS or am using incorrect commands?

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  11. For EI Capitan uninstalled previous version of virtual box and installed latest version fixed this issue.

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  13. i have the same error in mac sierra..how can i resolve???

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