The Raspberry Pi OS image is not bootable on VirtualBox.
VirtualBox running on a x86_64 host (i.e. AMD or Intel) can only run x86 and x86_64 based guests.
VirtualBox running on a ARM64 host (i.e. Mac with Apple Silicon or ARM Surface) can only run a very limited set of ARM64 guests.
ARM64 guests running on an ARM64 host are required to support UEFI, which the Raspberry Pi's and Raspberry Pi OS do not; they use a proprietary bootloader that looks for specific files (bootcode.bin, start.elf, and config.txt) on a FAT32 partition.
More information: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/topic ... ction.html
tl;dr
The Raspberry Pi OS image is not bootable on VirtualBox.
VirtualBox running on a x86_64 host (i.e. AMD or Intel) can only run x86 and x86_64 based guests.
VirtualBox running on a ARM64 host (i.e. Mac with Apple Silicon or ARM Surface) can only run a very limited set of ARM64 guests.
ARM64 guests running on an ARM64 host are required to support UEFI, which the Raspberry Pi's and Raspberry Pi OS do not; they use a proprietary bootloader that looks for specific files (bootcode.bin, start.elf, and config.txt) on a FAT32 partition.
More information: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/topic ... ction.html
tl;dr
The Raspberry Pi OS image is not bootable on VirtualBox.
Statistics: Posted by phattmatt — Thu Feb 12, 2026 9:27 am