Followed all the steps, but your VM keep refuses to boot up?

This is a common issue, and while every machine is different, I thought I'd post this additional lecture to provide solutions to common issues that people report.

Please take a look at the following and see if they help. If these solutions don't help, please get in touch via the Q&A and we will try our best to help you out.

1) Are you using the right type of ISO?

I know it sounds silly, but are you using the right ISO file for your machine? For example, if your machine is using a 32-bit operating system, are you using a 32-bit ISO?

2) Does using an ISO with a smaller bit-value work?

If you are trying a 64-bit ISO, and you have a 64-bit machine, have you tried to see if a 32-bit ISO works?

3) Have you provided the VM with enough RAM?

If in doubt, try to be generous with the RAM allocation and then scale it back if you get performance issues. If you can, try starting at 8GB and see how you get on.

4) Does your machine have hardware virtualisation enabled by default?

I find that this is the most common issue. Some computers don't have hardware virtualization enabled by default, but this necessary for the running of a virtual machine.

The settings to change this can be found in your computer's BIOS.

The BIOS (basic input/output system) is the program a personal computer's microprocessor uses to get the computer system started after you turn it on.

To access your BIOS settings, you need to restart your computer, and then, while the computer is booting up, press some specific keys to access the BIOS menu. This happens before your main operating system has loaded.

The method to access the BIOS is different for each model of computer. It would be a good idea to google around how to do it for your specific model. For example, if I had a Toshiba Satellite, I might google "How to access BIOS on toshiba satellite", and figure it out from there.

Once you access the BIOS, the steps to enable hardware virtualization are also different for each model of computer, but they are all rather simple. You could search, for example, "How to enable hardware virtualization on a Toshiba satellite", and watch a Youtube Video and jot down the steps.

Although it won't work for all computers, there is a useful video here that will give you a general idea of the whole process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-HypXAzo6o

5) Facing a "Booting Kernel failed: Invalid Argument..." error?

According to this post on the Ubuntu forums, an error crept into your ISO file as it was being downloaded. Unfortunately, you need to download the ISO file again (ugh!) and try again.

To check for issues the second time, you can validate that your ISO file arrived in the same condition that it should be by following this guide on the Ubuntu website

6) On a Mac and getting a "kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908) error?

Don't worry, there is a blog post that walks you through exactly this issue :) It seems like a super quick fix!

7) If you are using Windows, try installing Bash for Windows

As a new development, you can now install an entire Linux subsystem locally on Windows!

Although you won't get access to the full Ubuntu desktop environment that you see me using in the videos, you will get access to the bash shell, which should be sufficient to get you started.

The downsides are that there might be some differences in your experiences between what is shown in the videos and what you actually experience. It's worth a shot though, right?

If you want to try this (very cool) method, then take a look at this guide

I hope these pointers help get you started!

Best wishes,

Ziyad