Visual Studio emulator for Android stuck at "OS is starting...", only on API Level 23 / Android 6

Question

Since I read the news about Xamarin now being "free", I immediately installed Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 and the Android tooling (NDKs, SDKs for 19-23, Visual Studio Emulator for Android dated January 2016) to start working on an Android application.

Excited I launched the emulator from Tools -> Visual Studio Emulator for Android and installed the profile that is the best match for my own phone. Since my phone is on Android 6, I decided to get a profile for API Level 23 / Android 6.

Since I had already enabled Hyper-V a few months ago, the installation for the profile only had to add me to the Administrators group and create 2 network adapters.

So far, so good.

Upon starting the emulator, it would stay at "OS is starting...". I figured I'd wait a while. I figured I'd wait a while longer too. After that, I gave up the possibility of it going to work and started investigating.

I also tried other profiles, a few others from API Level 23, one from 22 and one from 19. Only the ones from API Level 23 did not work.

The following steps are what I came up with so far by Googling etc. I tried them in all sorts of combinations:

• Rebooting
• Disabling / enabling Hyper-V
• Removing vEthernet adapters (through the Hyper-V Manager).
• Running XDECleanup
• Allowing XDE through my Windows Firewall as application (incoming)
• Restoring the emulator software in Programs and Features
• Enabling / disabling "Processor Compatibility" in Hyper-V Manager.

This is the data I've gathered so far:

• A screenshot of the error message that the emulator gives after waiting a long time (10 - 15 minutes, maybe a little longer)

• A screenshot of the last part of the log when being connected to the Android 6 VM:

• A screenshot of the last part of the log of a working VM (this one's from an Android 4.4 VM):

Answer 1

Responses I've got so far from Microsoft:

-Those errors are normal -And the only step I've tryed which they told me to, and I don't see here, it's this one:

On Hyper-V Manager, check the option for compatibility under CPU section

Besides from this, just make sure that on Hyper-V you get only 2 switches, the one you use to connect to the internet and the one that the VS Emulator for Android creates, I haven't got any results, but if you try, maybe you will.

Answer 2

In my case, I was mucking around with the VS emulator's virtual switches and had the network adapters in the wrong order.

After I moved the Windows Phone Emulator Internal Switch (Created when first running the VS Emulator) to the first Network Adapter slot in my settings, the emulator started up just fine. Apparently, order matters.