@mk first, an intermediate: try to REinstall virtualbox... no luck with that. So, UNinstall (this also takes virtualbox-qt and virtualbox-dkms with it) and REinstall by selecting *-dkms, which then wants the other two as well. The process first tries to STOP kernel modules and restart them - but that step FAILs; then it runs virtualbox-dkms (just as I did) - seemingly it does the same, and NO vboxdrv appears in /etc/init.d/ ... but it finalizes with a stop kernel modules and start kernel modules and this time that step succeeds! Sure enough, I no longer get an error message when starting VirtualBox, and a VM *can* now be started. #phew but where is vboxdrv now??? very #confuzzled