Getting error message when trying to start a virtual machine

Wierdly, for me it worked by closing VirtualBox and then running

sudo modprobe vboxdrv 

from the terminal and then restarting VirtualBox

I had the same problem and solved it by

1. Purging Virtualbox:

   sudo apt-get purge virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-ose-qt virtualbox-qt

2. I then reinstalled;

   sudo apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-ose virtualbox

   and noticed:

   dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualbox-ose:
   virtualbox-ose depends on virtualbox; however:
   Package virtualbox is not configured yet.
   Package virtualbox-4.0 which provides virtualbox is not installed.
   

3. so I tried installing virtualbox-4.0;

   sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.0

   That worked and pulled in the correct VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules.

4. I then had to download and install the correct version of the extension pack Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.16-75491.vbox-extpack.

That worked, and I now have a fully functioning Virtualbox instance.

Try to uninstall VirtualBox from the command line:

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-ose-qt virtualbox-qt

If it succesfully uninstalled reinstall it:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-ose-qt virtualbox-qt

Carefully check if the command completes succesfully.