Not sure why it was so challenging to bring up Cloudera CDH 5.5 on VirtualBox 5.0.14 on my Windows 7 workstation (64-bit). My desktop is a Lenovo 30AGS01Y00 w/ 1 Intel64 CPU, 16GB RAM, and 1TB of HDD. The detail OS version: 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601.
After installing VirtualBox and unzip Cloudera QuickStart VM 5.5, I created my VM with Red Hat (64-bit), Memory Size: 8,192MB and the "Use an existing virtual hard disk file" option to point to the vmdk file of the Cloudera quickstart for virtual box file. After the VM was created I adjusted its settings, as recommended, such as "Shared Clipboard", "DragnDrop", "Boot Order" (leave Hard Disk only).
The chipset setting was PIIX3 by default. It made no difference when I tried both PIIX3 and ICH9.
I left Processor as 1 CPU because my desktop has only 1 physical CPU even though its VT-x and physical HyperThreading were enabled. Nested Paging was also enabled.
The Storage of the Cloudera VM was created with SATA and Type: AHCI. The rest of settings remained no change (as default).
When I tried to boot the VM my VM screen looked exactly the same as depicted in this question: Virtual machine "Cloudera quick start" not booting
I've been Googling this issues for about a week. The above question is the closest case I could find on the web. I tried a variety of VM settings but no luck. Not sure what the root cause is.
I tried to fall back to Cloudera QuickStart VM 5.4.2. No luck either.
Looks like zip file cannot be attached. Some key elements in VBox and VboxHardening logs were excerpted as follows:
Vbox.log
00:00:02.535619 VMSetError: F:\tinderbox\win-5.0\src\VBox\Storage\VD.cpp(6410) int __cdecl VDOpen(struct VBOXHDD *,const char *,const char *,unsigned int,struct VDINTERFACE *); rc=VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED
Note: I don't know what F: drive is. There is no F: drive on my desktop.
00:00:02.520998 AIOMgr: Endpoint for file 'C:\CDH_5.4.2\cloudera-quickstart-vm-5.4.2-0-virtualbox-disk1.vmdk' (flags 000c0781) created successfully
00:00:02.535626 VMSetError: VD: error VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED opening image file 'C:\CDH_5.4.2\cloudera-quickstart-vm-5.4.2-0-virtualbox-disk1.vmdk'
00:00:02.567924 AIOMgr: Preparing flush failed with VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED, disabling async flushes
VBoxHardening.log:
62a4.318: NtOpenDirectoryObject failed on \Driver: 0xc0000022
This may not make a difference, but have you tried importing the .ovf file (not the .vmdk one)?
Also, for future reference, there is much Cloudera VM knowledge here: https://community.cloudera.com/t5/Apache-Hadoop-Concepts-and/bd-p/ApacheHadoopConcepts