Unless Oracle has made a drastic change in the last few months VirtualBox
runs very nicely on 32 bit operating systems - at least it always has for
me. Make sure you downloaded the correct version as they have both.

Are you sure you have a 64 bit CPU? One can install a 32 bit O/S on a 64 bit
machine (and I have), but not vice versa. However, a 64 bit O/S probably
requires a 64 bit version of VirtualBox.

Lack of drivers? Very unlikely.

Comments? Corrections?

The machine came with 64 bit win7. The laptop spec sheet says it has a 64 bit
amd e-240 cpu.

I may be confused by the virtualbox download page. It says.....

"To install VirtualBox anyway you need to setup a 64-bit chroot environment."

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure what this means as I am still learning the
linux dialect. The virtualbox download page shows i386 and amd64 versions for
10.04 LTS.

You might try the i386 versions of both Ubuntu and VB. That is the code for
the 32 bit version. The 64 bit version is only required to access more than
3 GB of memory (might be 4 GB, I don't have that much memory).

I have a el-cheapo toshiba laptop (sattelite L505) that came
with 64 bit win7. I installed 32 bit Ubuntu on it with no problems,
and the 32 bit VirtualBox. If you are installing the 32 bit ubuntu,
you want to download the i386 version and install that one. It
doesn't matter what your processor is but how the kernel is set up
(that is my understanding and experience, anyway - maybe someone can
correct me). If you install the 64bit ubuntu, then you need the other
Vbox download- though you may have the chroot issue there as
ubuntu64bit is i686. I don't know what or how that interacts with
something designed for amd64. I don't understand that stuff too well.

"uname -m" in a terminal will return your Kernel architecture, fwiw.

Regarding the installation error, it is probably just a bad burn or
download of the iso.

Also, I really think the chroot 64 stuff was for installing a 64bit
guest on a 32 bit host, but I don't know for sure.

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I couldn't catch the error message because
it scrolled continuously and could not be stopped until I did a forced shutdown.

The error did not show up for several minutes, during which time the ubunto
splash (can I call it that in linux?) screen showed no indication of a problem.

The 32 bit linux 10.04 LTS loaded with no apparent problems so I'll probably
just go back to it. Then I'll try the i386 version of VB - probably Monday.

I always try to keep it simple.

"AMD64" describes a set of instructions a CPU can execute. All the latest Intel
processors can run the "AMD64" instructions. I think that includes all or almost
all "core 2" and later CPUs, even Atom CPUs.

Which Toshiba? Which CPU?

Are you doing a WUBI install? It's meant for evaluation, not actual day-to-day
usage.

Most likely, you have a bad download or a bad burn of the CD. I had no trouble
installing 10.04 64-bit on an HP G62, which is probably quite similar to your
Toshiba. (Well, HP used up all four possible primary partitions on the hard
drive, which slowed me down some, but it doesn't sound like that was your
problem with the Toshiba.)

"An endless loop of errors" gives no hint about what problem you had. If you
quoted an error message, perhaps people could help you.

Everything Leslie said was correct.