Hire the author: Bijita K
When installing Ubuntu you may come across this issue in Virtualbox. Initially, the installation may run smoothly. Then once you restart the screen goes completely black with or without the ubuntu logo. There can be a lot of reasons why this is happening. In this article, we are going to explore its multiple causes. And attempt multiple approaches to solve this issue in Virtualbox.
Virtualization Issue & Solution
Commonly virtualization may be the cause of this issue. Ensure virtualization is enabled on your computer. In order to do this, you should type task manager on the Windows search bar and open it. Click the Performance tab and choose CPU. You should check the virtualization status here as shown below:

If it is turned on then, next you should make sure that your computer has the virtual machine platform feature turned on. Additionally, also make sure that the windows hypervisor platform feature is turned off. In order to do this, you should type “Turn windows features on or off” on the Windows search bar and open it.

Common Virtualbox Issues & Solutions
If the above methods do not work then the next step is to try out the following common solutions to solve the Virtualbox issue. These may sometimes be causing the issue:
- Try changing out your video memory to 128 MB from the display tab in the settings of the virtual machine
- Change your graphics controller to VMSVGA from the display tab in the settings of the virtual machine
- Ensure your ISO image is not corrupted. For this, you can download it from the official site https://ubuntu.com/.
Try reopening your virtual machine after this. If you are still facing the issue in Virtualbox then Hyper-V(Hypervisor) may be causing it.
Hypervisor Issue & Solution
In your Virtualbox virtual machine instance window check if there is a little turtle visible in the bottom right corner.

This could mean that a hypervisor could be active. This could be causing the issue in Virtualbox. Additionally, in order to check this, type system information in the windows search bar and open it. In the system summary, you should check if the hypervisor is detected as shown in the end detail of the following picture.

If you find this, go through the following steps to turn the hypervisor off completely.
- Shut down all the programs
- Open the command prompt by typing cmd into the Windows search bar and selecting the run as administrator option.
- Enter this command to turn the hypervisor off
Also, this additional command may sometimes be needed.
4. Then enter this command.
Once the computer turns off, wait for 20 seconds and restart it. Then try opening the virtual machine instance in the Virtualbox. It should work now.
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Hi Bijita,
Nice article, adding above explained configurations resolved black screen issue with Virtual box.
Thanks
The turtle is gone, but the screen is still black. Ubuntu 20.04, Virtual Box 6.1 on Windows 10. Do I need to create a new VM after going through procedure above? Or any other, additional suggestions? Thanks in advance!
Hi John. This is a late reply but the existing VM should work. There may be other issues causing this.
Thanks a lot for this article! I was stuck for three days with that blank screen and finally turning off the hypervisor saved me!! :))
Thank you! this helped me fix my issue 🙂
Great article. It’s nice to find good, well-written content that is actually helpful. Increasing the video memory did it for me.
It worked for me !!! Thank you so much !!