Genymotion Desktop does not support Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1, Windows IoT, nor Windows server systems. Please use a supported Windows system.
You are using a VPN and/or Firewall
If you are using a VPN or a firewall, please refer to these articles:
VirtualBox specific issues
Reboot your PC
If you installed VirtualBox alongside Genymotion, make sure to reboot your PC before launching Genymotion.
Verify your Windows security settings
Every time Genymotion Desktop is started, it calls VirtualBox to perform several operations:
- verify the availability of at least one VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter
- create a VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter if the above fails
- list all the deployed virtual devices
These operations require administrator rights to be performed successfully. If your Windows user account has too tight security settings, they will fail.
To avoid this, make sure that:
- your Windows user account has Administrator rights (i.e. it is a member of the Administrators group)
- your Windows security settings are not too tight
Note
If you get many User Account Control (UAC) pop-ups prompting for Administrator permission, you may also consider turning them off. For instructions, please refer to this article: Enable or Disable User Account Control (UAC) in Windows
Disable Hyper-V
If you are using Windows Pro or Enterprise, this error may be caused by Hyper-V which interferes with VirtualBox. We recommend disabling Hyper-V when using Genymotion Desktop.
If you still need Hyper-V, you can also switch to QEMU hypervisor: QEMU actually use Hyper-V to access your CPU virtualization technology. However, please note that QEMU support is still experimental and there are known issues on Windows systems at the moment.
Fix VirtualBox Host-only adapter bugs
Genymotion creates and uses VirtualBox Host-only interfaces to communicate with VirtualBox. However, there are known bugs on some Windows systems.
You will find several methods to solve them below.
Solution 1: Remove the excess VirtualBox Host-only interface
On some systems, VirtualBox creates many Host-only interfaces which confuses Genymotion. To solve this, you need to remove them:
- Open VirtualBox.
- Go to File > Tools > Network Manager.
- In the Host-only Networks tab, remove all the VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter.
- Run Genymotion. You will probably get an error. If so, just reboot your PC.
You should now see only two or three VirtualBox Host-only interface:
If there are more, repeat steps 3 and 4.
If it still does not work, make sure that all the Host-only interface are enabled:
- Go to Settings > Network & Internet > Change adapter options
- Enable (left-click -> Enable) any disabled VBox Host-only interface
Note
On Windows 11, you can reach this page by typing "view network connections"
in the windows menu search box:
Solution 2: Disable and re-enable VirtualBox Host-only interface
If there is only one or two Host-only interface and you still get an error, try the following:
- Open Windows Settings > Network & Internet > Change adapter options
- Right-click on VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter
- Select Disable
- Right-click on the interface again and select Enable
Switch to QEMU Hypervisor
On some rare hardware configurations, VirtualBox is unable to create viable Host-only interfaces; if none of the above solutions worked for you, you can try to switch to QEMU hypervisor.
Important
- QEMU support is still experimental on Windows systems and there are
known
issues. Check out Genymotion Desktop release notes for more information.
- QEMU requires Hyper-V which is available on Windows Pro and Entreprise
editions by default. For Windows Home editions, you will need to install
Hyper-V manually. See
"Unable to start virtual device" when using QEMU (Windows only)
for more details.