Comment 50 for bug 1736116

I'm sorry if the command I wrote didn't work for you. Here's the whole thing:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list' ; wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add ; sudo apt remove virtualbox ; sudo apt update ; sudo apt install virtualbox-5.2

Now, let's break that apart.

First of all, I'm running Ubuntu 16.04.3.

The command below adds one line to the file /etc/apt/sources.list, so that it now knows a new place from which to install virtualbox-5.2:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'

The next command downloads a key from virtualbox.org and adds that key to your ubuntu system:

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add

Next, we uninstall your existing version of virtualbox:

sudo apt remove virtualbox

Next we do an update, so your system becomes aware of the packages from the new source we added:

sudo apt update

Last, we install the 5.2 version of virtualbox:
sudo apt install virtualbox-5.2

I did not encounter your issue. Maybe try this command:
sudo apt dist-upgrade ; sudo apt install virtualbox-5.2

Reboot your computer and try to launch virtualbox again.

I'm sorry my command didn't work for you. Worst case, you could undo it by opening this file and removing the last line we added:
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
(after you remove that line hit ctrl-o to save)

Then you could remove virtualbox 5.2:
sudo apt remove virtualbox-5.2

Then update your system:
sudo apt update

Then install the virtualbox you had before:
sudo apt install virtualbox

And to make the old version work, you can press the esc key a few time right when ubuntu starts to boot. Then choose advance and boot the 4.10 kernel instead of 4.13.

I hope this helps.