The other day i want to install ubuntu on my windows xp sp3 using vmware. Then i finally remembered wait a minute, why not try virtual box. I've heard some of my friends talking about virtual box from sun microsystems. I thought of giving it a shot.

I went and grabbed the latest bits of Virtual Box 1.6.4 for Windows platform through the link at http://virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads It was just 22.57MB and was a quick download. Then i installed using the downloaded setup and installation was pretty smooth and got installed in a few secs.

Then i grabbed latest ubuntu 8.04.1 server edition bits from ubuntu site and did the following for creating a new Virtual machine.

Finally got ubuntu server successfully installed on virtual box and now it's time to launch. So, i went and selected the virtual machine and clicked on Start. Voila... it started to GRUB load... and then stopped with the error Unable to boot

"Starting up ...
This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU:0:6
Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU."

Initially i thought something wrong with the disc image i downloaded from ubuntu. So, i went and grabbed another one, this time was 7.01 from ubuntu site and did the above steps for installing and got the same problem. I googled and got some results and couldn't find a solution for the problem. So, i decided to find out the hard way i.e trial and error. I went and tried changed each and every settings and finally found the following setting worked great and solved the problem.

Choose the VM
Right click and Choose Settings
Under General, Choose Advanced Tab
Check the "Enable PAE/NX" check box
Click OK and now choose Start

It'll work. Let me know how it went for you. enjoy!