All of a sudden VBOX (not VM's) won't start

[BobBertrand]

I've now installed the latest version V5.2.12 and fallin back to V5.0.10, rebooting in between.

I'm on Windows 10 Version 1709. Nothing special.

When I now start VBOX, I get as shown in the attachment:

Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object.

The application will now terminate.



Completely failed to instantiate CLSID_VirtualBox: CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE.

Result Code: CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE (0x80080005)
Component: VirtualBoxClientWrap
Interface: IVirtualBoxClient {d2937a8e-cb8d-4382-90ba-b7da78a74573}

[BobBertrand]

I tried installing as Admin (this should not be necessary in a post 1970 written program installer). I tried specifying compatibility mode.

This is definetely a program bug in the program or its installer.

[socratis]

this should not be necessary in a post 1970 written program installer

I wouldn't jump so fast to conclusion if I were you. Just ask around if there are differences between an Administrator and being "the" Administrator...

I tried specifying compatibility mode.

That is absolutely, definitely unnecessary. Maybe even the wrong move, as the installer might take a different path depending on the host. That's NOT why the compatibility mode was invented.

This is definetely a program bug in the program or its installer.

I'll make you a bet. Get a new hard drive, install Windows 1709 (or your favorite) from scratch, then install VirtualBox. If it fails, I'll buy you a second hard drive, your choice. If it works, I want a 2 TB SSD for an Apple MBP. Want to accept?

The fact that your Windows is botched, has nothing to do with the installer, or else everybody (and their cousin) would complain about it. The fact that it is a handful of users and those have really done some work on their Windows, should tell you that it's not the VirtualBox installer.

Plus, even if it's the installer, VirtualBox is not running at the time, the MSI (Microsoft installer) is. And there have been many, many cases where that ... thing fails to work as intended. Even Microsoft has some tools to fix its installer database.

[BobBertrand]

Everything else works. During install, couldn't VBOX be more helpful in saying what the problem is. Now I'll have to search Windows for a known solution. I had a 2nd throw away install of W10.

Do you (or does anyone) have ANY clues where in Windows I would look to fix the problem? I had encountered this problem before and falling back fixed the issue.

Re-installing Windows is NOT an option - that would take an unplanned 10 days of time.

So I "can" buy that this is a Windows issue ONLY affecting VBOX. The difference between running as Admin etc - can you elaborate, because I know this subject fairly well. Any Windows software written Vista+ knows it can check if it is exec with admin rights and if not, invoke consent to request approval, which is the same as launching it as admin to being with. You are still exec under the original userid - not the ADMINISTRATOR account, which is disabled. You are executing with your full token userid that is a member of the ADMINISTRATORS group. Can you shed some light, because VBOX is the only software I've ever heard that requires this strange way of installing, which would seem therefore to be a bug in VBOX.

But back to the main - ANY idea what is wrong, accepting that it is something in my Windows system?

[socratis]

Fixing COM problems requires a PhD in CompSci, so it's not up to VirtualBox (or any other program) to list what can be wrong. There can be a gazillion things that could go wrong. For example, take a look at another thread [Solved] Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object (and if you search the forums there are way more than plenty of hits):

How does one end up in such a conundrum? Easy... Sloppy installers. Say an installer wants to change the permissions on its registry keys only, "CLSID/MyApp" to be only accessible from the Administrator. But instead of that it changes the permissions to the whole "CLSID" key. It just hosed your system and every app that you install from that point on!

The difference between running as Admin etc - can you elaborate, because I know this subject fairly well.

Well, you know about the different security tokens that are present during an interactive session and one that's a true administrative session. The interactive logon is not that high in the privileges order, that's why there is a "Run as Administrator". Two favorite examples of mine, assuming you are logged in as an Admin already:

• Open a Command Prompt. Open a Command prompt with RunAsAdministrator. See the difference in the path? Why do you think that is? Because they have different environments.
• Open Autoruns (or most apps) from SysInternals (now Microsoft). Do you see that they have a special entry for RunAsAdministrator? With your simple login privileges you can see a limited amount of info, with the RunAsAdministrator, you have access to everything.

And to finally top it off, there's (If I remember this correctly) a third level, the network one. I used to have a couple of links to some Microsoft articles, explaining the whole thing in such detail that it was making my head spin , I simply can't find them at the moment.

[BobBertrand]

Well I'm at a loss. Short of re-installing W10 ..............

But I do still blame VBOX - the error message could be more helpful - pointing to why it is failing - what it doesn't like about Windows.

VBOX is the only app that I'm having problems with. I uninstalled again and re-installed downlevel.

Only thing which did enter my mind - I hadn't used VBOX since I did a trial install of VMWARE Player (free). Any known issues with installing VMWARE causing VBOX to vomit?

[socratis]

Any known issues with installing VMWARE causing VBOX to vomit?

Nope, none reported. They can peacefully coexist.