Interface (‘VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter’) is not a Host-Only Adapter interface (VERR_INTERNAL_ERROR).

Refresh MAC address and get a new random MAC address helps this Host-Only Adapter interface issue.

The laptop was upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 . After that ,VirtualBox 5.0 software failed to start up and there was no response at all. The software is neither up nor with any error messages.

Then uninstalled VirtualBox 5.0 and installed latest VirtualBox 5.1.6. It was better this time. But when I tried to start up one Linux virtual server, got this message:

capture_1
Interface ('VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter') is not a Host-Only Adapter interface (VERR_INTERNAL_ERROR).


Result Code: 
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: 
ConsoleWrap
Interface: 
IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}

Checked a couple of items, all look fine:

a) Run “VBoxManage list hostonlyifs”

c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage list hostonlyifs
Name: VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter #2
GUID: be24ca57-3d51-4b39-bb51-5675a36f571b
DHCP: Disabled
IPAddress: 192.168.56.1
NetworkMask: 255.255.255.0
IPV6Address: fe80:0000:0000:0000:2561:106d:eb4c:7410
IPV6NetworkMaskPrefixLength: 64
HardwareAddress: 0a:00:27:00:00:18
MediumType: Ethernet
Status: Up
VBoxNetworkName: HostInterfaceNetworking-VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter #2

b) Go to File->Preference->Network->Host-only Network Details, looks good.

capture_2

c) “VirtualBox NDIS6 Briged Networking Driver” is checked:

capture_3

d)  Click refresh button to get a new “MAC ADDRESS”.

capture_4

e) After the new “MAC ADDRESS”, then everything is working fine. Linux virtual machine server started up successfully.

So it is working by giving a new “MAC address”. Amazing !

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33 thoughts on “Interface (‘VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter’) is not a Host-Only Adapter interface (VERR_INTERNAL_ERROR).”

  4. Might be a bit late to the party here, but it’s not the MAC address causing it. It’s the name of the Host Only. I’m guessing the machine you’re importing originally used ‘VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter’ instead of ‘VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter #2’. When opening the network settings for the VM, it automatically switches to #2 because it’s the only one there, thus fixing the problem when pressing ‘Okay’.

    I have the same problem. I tried renaming it, but it says that ‘VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter’ already exists, despite it now showing up anywhere.

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  5. Thank you! I have spent almost two hours debugging this. Everyone else with this error seems to just check a box in the network adapter settings for the NDIS6 driver. What to do if that’s not your problem? I uninstalled and reinstalled and rebooted and used test builds and tried EVERTHING in all the trouble tickets I could find.

    Finally, your explanation with the MAC address refresh cured it *instantly*. Thank you thank you thank you!

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  7. What happened to the original “VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter”? In my case it was converted to “bridge”, you can see it with “VBoxManage list bridgedifs” but I was unable to remove this network adapter from Windows 10 configuration.

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  8. Error happened after updating windows 10
    Cannot vagrant up anymore:

    Command: [“startvm”, “0501201a-8118-47ca-a754-7b627807db48”, “–type”, “headless”]

    Stderr: VBoxManage.exe: error: Interface (‘VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter #3’) is not a Host- Only Adapter interface (VERR_INTERNAL_ERROR)
    VBoxManage.exe: error: Details: code E_FAIL (0x80004005), component ConsoleWrap, interface IConsole

    The refresh on the mac address did the trick. Thanks!

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  10. It worked for me. The virtual interface suddenly dissapeared from windows 10, after Vbox software removal and restart (with update in this case), network interface appeared again, but anyway I had to generate a new mac-address (BTW I had one manually configured)

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  14. In my case, trying to boot up the machine in vagrant produced the above error. I couldn’t refresh the MAC address because the state of the machine was “saved”. I tried to boot the machine directly in VirtualBox and got the same error, which indicated it was a problem in VirtualBox and not with the Vagrant configuration.

    After updating vagrant and virtual box, I discarded the saved state of the machine (it warns you that this is like a hard shutdown of the guest os) which changed its state from ‘saved’ to ‘powered off’. Then I was able to reset the MAC address (this may be optional – I hadn’t the chance to try it both ways.)

    After this “vagrant up” ran a series of updates and booted. Some state data may have been lost.

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  15. Thank you very much for this explanation : As i was trying to start Oracle VirtualBox after a Windows 10 update, impossible to start it !
    I’ve had to redefine the VirtualBox “Host_Only Ethernet Adaptater #2” and refresh mac adress, and that’s it,
    Thanks again !

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