VBox Configuration

[Dataman]

A lot of us have had problems running VBox projects.  

For Windows users one of the problems is improper config. in your BIOS and BOINC client_state.xml file.

BIOS: In most recent BIOS versions virtualization is enabled by default. In some machines older than a few years it was disabled by default and you must manually go into the BIOS and enable it. Depending on your BIOS it is found in different places. If it is disabled then you must enable it. If there is no reference to it your machine does not support virtualization.

To check to see the state of your machine, open task manager. Click on the "Performance" tab and in the lower right it should show "Virtualization: enabled" or "disabled". If it is not there, your machine does not support it.

client_state.xml: This is what causes a lot of failures. If you EVER tried to run a VBox project with virtualization DISABLED in the BIOS, BOINC will add this line in the client_state.xml file:

<p_vm_extensions_disabled>1</p_vm_extensions_disabled>

0= enabled
1= disabled

Even when you enable virtualization in the BIOS, BOINC DOES NOT change the value to 0. You must manually edit it.

1. Shut down BOINC
2. Open client_state.xml in notepad and change to value to 0 so it looks like this:

<p_vm_extensions_disabled>0</p_vm_extensions_disabled>

3. Save the file.

4. Restart the machine and request new VBox tasks. (You can probably just restart BOINC but rebooting the machine never hurts.)


If anyone else has VBox tips and tricks, please post them here.

[tazzduke]

Hi Dataman

Thankyou for the tip, lucky I have a couple of computers that are enabled by default.

Regards