In looking at the documentation at http://httpd.apache.org, I found that the virtual host is a core option. MPM is a process/thread management issue within the apache web server. Having or not having MPM should not be a determining factor in the support of virtual hosts.
My guess therefore is that there are directives contained within your httpd.conf file are not consistent with the type of MPM modules are compiled into the apache server. For instance, you might be using the prefork MPM but the directives in the httpd.conf file would contain something like ThreadsperChild which is not appropriate. This could be the source of your error message.
The Apache documentation further indicates that depending on the platform, there is a default MPM always selected by the configure process you go through. In Linux it is prefork.