Here's how to turn on guest OS in VirtualBox automatically when host PC is turned on. In this guide I use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64bit and VirtualBox 5.1.22 All we need to do is create a file with the extension * .service and put in the /lib/systemd/system folder. In this guide use the autostartvbox.service file name as an example. sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/autostartvbox.service The contents of the file are as follows #!/bin/sh [ Unit ] Description = Autostart VBOX Guest on Boot [ Service ] User = your_user ExecStart = /usr/bin/VBoxHeadless --startvm VirtualBox_Guest_Name [ Install ] WantedBy = multi-user.target allows the service to run when the system boot with the following command sudo systemctl enable autostartvbox.service If successful then the feedback obtained is as follows Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/autostartvbox.service to /lib/systemd/system/autostartvbox.service ...