VirtualBox – RTR3InitEx failed with rc=-1912 (rc=-1912)

It seems you have two separate versions of VirtualBox installed on your system!

I would recommend that you fully uninstall all versions of VirtualBox:

sudo apt-get autoremove 'virtualbox*'

Then reinstall directly from Oracle virtualbox. Go to the VB download page, scroll down to “Debian-based Linux distributions“, and follow the instructions or download VB binary package for all distributions and then run the installer like this:

cd /path/to/downloaded/file
chmod +x VirtualBox-x.x.xx-xxxxxx-Linux_xxxxx.run
./VirtualBox-x.x.xx-xxxxxx-Linux_xxxxx.run

Check that you have vbox modules loaded:

lsmod | grep vbox

On my machine, I have vboxpci, vboxnetadp, vboxnetflt, and vboxdrv

Check if they are the correct version:

modinfo vboxdrv

Very likely that the version of this module would be 5.0.32 rxxxxxx, but you are running virtualbox 5.1

If this is not the case, this answer might not help solve your problem.

Otherwise, this might be caused by not removing the modules left over by your old-version virtualbox, and the new modules are not overwriting.

Simply remove all those old modules and reboot, and it should fix the problem:

# This command list all files in the same directory of the vboxdrv module
# Double check they are all vbox* modules and are outdated
# Then change "ls" to "rm" to remove all
ls $(dirname $(modinfo vboxdrv | sed -n 's/filename: *(.*)/1/p'))/*

I removed virtualbox using the command given below:

sudo apt autoremove --purge virtualbox*

but it did not work.

I found that the old vboxdrv mod was not getting removed and had to manually remove vboxdrv.ko from “/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/updates/dkms/”.

If reinstall Virtualbox not work. You should Try install or reinstall the dkms of Virtualbox

verify if have errors:

dpkg -P virtualbox-dkms

If you have error probably should try do:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-dkms

If you installed VirtualBox by official manual and didn’t forget to delete installed one from default Ubuntu repository.

Check if virtualbox-dkms is installed:

dpkg -l | grep virtualbox-dkms

If yes, then delete it and install dkms

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-dkms && 
sudo apt-get install dkms

Rebuild VirtualBox kernel modules:

sudo /sbin/vboxconfig 

So, in my case, the kernel modules were not removed properly.

Here are the details:

root@Dell5280 [~]# cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS

root@Dell5280 [~]# uname -r
4.13.0-31-generic

Problem:

root@Dell5280 [~]# modinfo vboxdrv
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-31-generic/updates/dkms/vboxdrv.ko
version: 5.0.40_Ubuntu r115130 (0x00240000)
license: GPL
description: Oracle VM VirtualBox Support Driver
author: Oracle Corporation
srcversion: 6D8B4900A693FC50489A130
depends:
name: vboxdrv
vermagic: 4.13.0-31-generic SMP mod_unload

FIX:

root@Dell5280 [~]# rm /lib/modules/4.13.0-31-generic/updates/dkms/vboxdrv.ko

root@Dell5280 [~]# modinfo vboxdrv
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-31-generic/updates/dkms/vboxdrv.ko
modinfo: ERROR: could not get modinfo from 'vboxdrv': No such file or directory
[1] root@Dell5280 [~]# /sbin/vboxconfig
vboxdrv.sh: Stopping VirtualBox services.
vboxdrv.sh: Building VirtualBox kernel modules.
vboxdrv.sh: Starting VirtualBox services.

root@Dell5280 [~]# modinfo vboxdrv
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-31-generic/misc/vboxdrv.ko
version: 5.2.7 r120349 (0x00290000)
license: GPL
description: Oracle VM VirtualBox Support Driver
author: Oracle Corporation
srcversion: 4880B21EFF1B605D6402982
depends:
name: vboxdrv
vermagic: 4.13.0-31-generic SMP mod_unload
parm: force_async_tsc:force the asynchronous TSC mode (int)

After this, everything works (at least in my case)

Hope it helps.
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I posted the reply at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox/+bug/1736116

If you want to use the latest version of virtualbox, you need to remove modules in the dkms folder.

VB 5.1 and older places modules in misc while VB 5.0 in the fork stores them in dkms folder.

1. Purge all virtualbox with apt

2. Check modinfo vboxdrv to see if it outputs version 5.0:

   $ modinfo vboxdrv
   filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-31-generic/updates/dkms/vboxdrv.ko
   version: 5.0.40_Ubuntu r115130 (0x00240000)
   license: GPL
   description: Oracle VM VirtualBox Support Driver
   author: Oracle Corporation
   srcversion: 6D8B4900A693FC50489A130
   depends:
   name: vboxdrv
   vermagic: 4.13.0-31-generic SMP mod_unload
    parm:           force_async_tsc:force the asynchronous TSC mode (int)
   

3. If it does output 5.0, delete the modules in dkms folder:

   $ sudo -i
   # sudo rmmod vboxnetadp vboxnetflt vboxpci vboxdrv 
   # cd /lib/modules/(kernelversion)-generic/updates/dkms
   # rm vbox*
   

4. Run sudo /sbin/rcvboxdrv setup (then check whether modinfo vboxdrv gives the correct version)

   $ modinfo vboxdrv
   filename:       /lib/modules/4.10.0-42-generic/misc/vboxdrv.ko
   version:        5.2.6 r120293 (0x00290000)
   license:        GPL
   description:    Oracle VM VirtualBox Support Driver
   author:         Oracle Corporation
   srcversion:     4880B21EFF1B605D6402982
   depends:        
   vermagic:       4.10.0-42-generic SMP mod_unload 
   parm:           force_async_tsc:force the asynchronous TSC mode (int)
   

a simple apt upgrade virtualbox worked for me

after updating to 6.0 this message also appeared. In case you didn’t do it, restart your system so that all new modules be loaded into the kernel. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.