Celeb Glow
updates | March 13, 2026

failed to access perfctr msr - When running Fedora on a VM

I'm trying to run a Virtual Machine with Fedora, and I choose to "Start fedora" from a list where I can start it or troubleshoot problems. The I get the following output:

[ 0.00000] tsc: Fast TSC calibration failed
[ 0.73...] Failed to access perfctr msr (MSR c00100044 is 0)

I have tried 3 versions of Fedora (Desktop, MATE, LXDE). All give me the second line, MATE and LXDE give also the first line. Then the VM just hangs.

What is the reason? What can I do?

  • The host runs Ubuntu and has an AMD processor with Virtualization enabled in the BIOS.
  • Running another version (the first from here) on a VM works fine. Running some lite version of Ubuntu also worked in the past.
  • I use the following command qemu-system-x86_64 -hda fedora.img -boot d -cdrom fedora.iso -m 512

1 Answer

Regarding: Failed to access perfctr msr

This is a notification that the CPU does not support performance counters.

These are only used to help the OS detect hanging (NMI Watchdog) and for PMU based performance analysis.

This can be ignored.

Regarding: Fast TSC Calibration Failed

This can also be ignored or try the following:

Add "clocksource=tsc" to grub

sudo mousepad /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="clocksource=tsc"

update "grub.cfg"

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
reboot
1

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