VirtualBox - Kernel requires an x86-64 cpu but only detected an i686 cpu

Question

Intel i5-2410M CPU running at 2.30 GHz running a Windows 7 64-bit operating system.

I have VirtualBox 4.13 installed.

I am trying to run ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64.iso but I get an error

this kernel requires an x86-64 cpu but only detected an i686 cpu

I even enabled the Intel Virtualization in the BIOS settings and then tried to use the image again but I still get the same error.

Is there any other reason why I can't use the image?

Answer 1

My best guess is that you somehow configured the VM for 32 bit execution instead of 64.

Can you share the XML machine configuration file (usually in your home directory - something like C:\Users\Goyuix - in a folder called VirtualBox VMs. There should be a folder for the Ubuntu VM you are creating with a file vm-name.vbox. You should be able to find an XML tag called Machine that holds that definition. Here is the relevant tag from one of my config files:

<Machine
  uuid="{5c71850d-9ead-4b1f-b8b2-9f147f3a70ac}"
  name="Ubuntu"
  OSType="Linux26_64"
  snapshotFolder="Snapshots"
  lastStateChange="2014-07-19T23:16:57Z">

Pay special note to the third attribute OSType how it has a _64 at the end. I would suggest when creating a VM for Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit to use a VM type = Linux and Version = Ubuntu (64 bit).