Host: Windows 11
Virtualbox version: 7.2.12
How to reproduce:
- Download latest Whonix image release.
- Import it to Vbox
- Update&Upgrade
- Vbox guest additions will be upgraded
- Reboot
- Black screen of death
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Cannot reproduce on Kubuntu 26.04.
Virtualization-Based Security enabled on Windows? It can cause black screens:
The virtualbox-guest-additions-iso update should be benign. We are working on making it so that Guest Additions are installed from this ISO rather than from Debian’s virtualbox-guest-x11 and virtualbox-guest-utils packages, but that work hasn’t been fully integrated into Whonix yet. The reason for the ISO upgrade is (likely) that derivative-maker no longer downloads a newer virtualbox-guest-additions-iso package from debian-fasttrack, but also leaves the fasttrack repo enabled. Thus you get an update. Nothing actually uses the package (yet, that will change soon most likely), so the update happens but shouldn’t do anything.
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Same, not reproduced on KS.
The green turtle is always in Vbox + Windows 11. The new thing is that its fully black (always) VS working but slow.
The symptoms of the green turtle issue vary widely from machine to machine and from one run of a VM to another (or at least seem to based on my own experience and forum reports). Hyper-V and VirtualBox simply do not get along.
Just downloaded Kali 2026.2 .ova version (which comes with guest additions installed by default as well), its working/booting fine. So something in Whonix causing an issue.
Maybe but not necessarily, it may just be things working sometimes and not working other times. AFAICT the issue looks like a race condition between VirtualBox and Hyper-V, so things might sometimes work, sometimes not, sometimes look completely broken, and sometimes look like everything’s fine and will continue to be fine.
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Maybe be technically true but it’s not worth something tracking down. Here is what is probably happening: Kali uses GUI tools A, B C, Kicksecure used D, E, F. These use different syscalls in a different order. Some combination of these can trigger all sorts of issues (not only black screen). None of them a bug in any non-broken environment (hardware or VM).
VirtualBox with green turtle however is a known-broken environment.
Hence, the only suggestion is to apply the workaround documented on the VirtualBox - Green Turtle Issue wiki page. Otherwise there is nothing worth fixing in Kicksecure or Whonix’s code base.
All “strange” bug reports with VirtualBox showing green turtle must be automatically considered invalid.
So basically the case then for windows users:
In order to use Whonix/KS on VBox (windows only) user must download and run this hyper-v disabler. And when this happen:
- Any user who bought Windows pro version+ for hyper-v he cant use Whonix/KS (because he will disable hyper-v).
- Some of Core isolation security features will be disabled: Memory integrity and Kernel-mode Hardware-enforced Stack Protection (and maybe more depends on the hardware).
So this needs to be a header for Vbox windows users in order not to report back weird bugs due to this issue.
Note (1): after disabling hyper-v, Whonix new version worked.
Note (2): This can be called a workaround but we dont know how long it will sustain if either windows gonna push an upgrade which will re-enable hyper-v or demand hyper-v to be enabled in order for windows to work (similar to Secureboot and TPM). But this will take time probably.
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This page should be fixed by removing:
- No action: You could ignore this issue. In that case, it may be best to only launch 1 VM at a time.
- Future: A better solution may come available later. [1]
Only keeping disable hyper-v options (script or manual) since they are the only available options.
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Documenting this on wiki/VirtualBox for Windows users would be good.
In the full context of that page - within the messy situation - it’s a valid option. But should add: In that case, don’t report bugs.
They are the only available options for some users. I have a machine here that can run Whonix VMs under Windows 11 with Hyper-V enabled without problems, so long as I only launch one VM at once. It’s also possible VirtualBox will simply fix their Hyper-V handling; QEMU seems to work pretty well with Hyper-V, so I’m not sure what Oracle is doing that results in it being this broken.
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Oracle Vbox = Mess.