[Solved] Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
mrjaype
Posts: 6
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 18:44

[Solved] Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by mrjaype »

I have been running VirtualBox on my system for almost a year now without any problems. My system is a Dell Inspiron 3847 with 12GB memory and Windows 10 Pro. Just recently I began receiving the following error when trying to launch VB:
Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object.
The application will now terminate.
Failed to instantiate CLSID_VirtualBox w/ IVirtualBox, but CLSID_VirtualBox w/ IUnknown works.
PSDispatch looks fine. Weird.
Result Code: E_NOINTERFACE (0x80004002)
Component: VirtualBoxClientWrap
Interface: {d2937a8e-cb8d-4382-90ba-b7da78a74573}
It doesn't matter how many times I try to uninstall/reinstall, clear registry of related VB keys, and manually delete leftover VB folders, I keep getting the same error.

Usually right after a fresh installation of VB I can launch it and create virtual machines, but if I close it and try to reopen it I'll get the error. This happens not only on ver. 5.2.8, but on older builds as well.

Any help would be appreciated.
Last edited by socratis on 27. Apr 2018, 22:06, edited 5 times in total.
Reason: Marked as [Solved].
whonline
Posts: 1
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 20:28

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by whonline »

 Edit: 4/23/18 2:50pm
I was able to get it started!
I tweaked my antivirus software. I am running BitDefender Full.
I have had problems in the past with programs that use the network adapters so I
-set the Virtual Box network adapter to Home/Office vs Dynamic or Public.
-Ran in compatibility for Windows Vista and Run as Admin

I really have no idea if my tweaks are what fixed it as I tried different settings (Windows 8, not running admin, and setting adapter to public) and finally rolled back the compatibility settings and just have it set to run normally and it still starts up and mounts the disk image fine. I will update if it starts to fail again. I haven't rebooted again yet because I just want to get through this. 
I am getting this same thing. Just installed and was able to create a VM on the first load. But starting any VM and repeated attempts to start Virtual Box has failed.

Tried
-Compatibility Mode Windows 8
-Compatibility Mode Vista SP 2
-Run as Admin

System is Sony Vaio
Core i7
64Bit
Windows 10 Home
8GB Ram

Sorry I can't help you but hopefully a bump will help.

Code: Select all

Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object.

The application will now terminate.



Failed to instantiate CLSID_VirtualBox w/ IVirtualBox, but CLSID_VirtualBox w/ IUnknown works.

PSDispatch looks fine. Weird.

Result Code: E_NOINTERFACE (0x80004002)
Component: VirtualBoxClientWrap
Interface: {d2937a8e-cb8d-4382-90ba-b7da78a74573}
mrjaype
Posts: 6
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 18:44

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by mrjaype »

There it is! You got me thinking and I discovered that the VirtualBox shortcut no longer launched the software as an administrator. Once I changed that setting I was able to launch the program without issue. Don't know how that shortcut got changed in the first place, though :?
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by socratis »

I don't know what you people are doing and what software you have installed, but VirtualBox does NOT need to run as Administrator. It may sometimes need to get installed as Administrator, but that's it. It's actually a security risk to run as Administrator.

Plus I don't know how you can still see your VMs. An Administrator is a different user from the "normal user", and VirtualBox stores the VMs and settings per user. So, I'm not sure about how you managed to get yourselves in this situation, but this is certainly NOT the solution.

Removing the "[Solved]" tag from the title, because that is the 100% wrong thing to do in VirtualBox, and people will get confused and follow the wrong advice.

Same goes for the "Compatibility mode" changes. 100% wrong.
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mrjaype
Posts: 6
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 18:44

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by mrjaype »

Please Socratis, dial it back a little. Don't presume that we are being fools here. I have not, to my knowledge, done anything unusual with VirtualBox; it's been the vanilla version from the VB website onto a licensed copy of Windows 10. Like I said originally, I have used it without issue on this machine for a year, then BOOM, this error code. It's probably not the VB software itself, but a conflict with Windows. I have found just one other post regarding this issue and it provided no solutions. Like it, or not this works. My only other option right now is to stop using VB, and that's not optimal.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
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Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by socratis »

mrjaype wrote:Please Socratis, dial it back a little.
I am a notch or two dialed down. But, I cannot let bad advice stand as is, that, I can't do I'm afraid. Other people could start following your advice, and again, that's the wrong thing to do. If you have security issues with your setup, you need to fix your setup, not give everyone in your host free reign.
mrjaype wrote: Like it, or not this works.
I don't like it, and it doesn't work, it's a massive security hole in your setup. What you have is not a solution, it's a "workaround" at best. Your host is botched security-wise. Letting everybody and their cousin run things as admin simply masks the underlying problem.

The proper solution would be to go methodically through a security review, or even better, do an in-place re-install of your OS.
mrjaype wrote:My only other option right now is to stop using VB, and that's not optimal.
Not at all, in that we agree. See what (if anything) you could do to restore proper security on your host, because at some point later down the road, if you let bad security descriptors accumulate, it's going to bite you, bad.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
mrjaype
Posts: 6
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 18:44

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by mrjaype »

Then, Socratis, I'm all ears. Please walk me through on how to do this properly, without the cantankerous tongue-lashings.
socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by socratis »

There are many ways to accomplish what you want, I won't go through the strategies in the VirtualBox forums, this is not a VirtualBox problem.

What you could do, is to search for "restore ACL permissions". You'll find plenty of techniques, some even from Microsoft. A couple of them talk about using a backup of previously stored permissions, and that's actually the fastest and most accurate way.

Since I assume you don't have such an "ACL permissions backup", what you could do is to install a clean Win10 installation on a VM, get the permissions from the VM, and apply them to your host! Problem solved! ;)
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
mrjaype
Posts: 6
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 18:44

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by mrjaype »

Thanks for the tips, Socratis.

Since I use VirtualBox simply to familiarize myself with various OS installations and test software within those OS environments, I think pursuing the path you suggested would be a bit risky for me since I lack familiarity with ACL permissions and what they do; I may end up honking my system up pretty good faffing about in regions I don't know.

I'll stick with the work-around I discovered for now.

Thanks for your help!
socratis
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Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by socratis »

mrjaype wrote:I'll stick with the work-around I discovered for now.
It's OK, as long as you realize the risks.

To be honest with you, I'm not 100% sure if this is a filesystem ACL problem, or a registry ACL problem. The latter is a major pain to fix, so convoluted, with no guarantees that it will work, so much so, that it's preferable to just re-install the whole system.

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! :shock:
mrjaype wrote:Thanks for your help!
No problemo ;)
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
mrjaype
Posts: 6
Joined: 23. Apr 2018, 18:44

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by mrjaype »

Installation of the most recent build of VirtualBox (5.2.10) has resolved the issue. I no longer need to run VB in administrator mode to avoid the error. I don't know what it fixed, but it was able to do what re-installations of 5.2.8 and earlier builds were unable to do. Perhaps the newest build overwrote some obscure corrupted file or registry key I missed when trying to perform a clean installation.

Is the subject title now worthy of a [Solved] tag?
socratis
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Location: Greece

Re: Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by socratis »

mrjaype wrote:Is the subject title now worthy of a [Solved] tag?
Absolutely!!! Any problem that has a proper solution does! :D

First of all, thank you for the feedback!

Second, maybe they tweaked the installer to re-apply the ACLs? I don't know, I've been a little bit behind in reviewing the Timeline, so I can't give you a definitive answer at this point.

But really glad it works now "as nature intended"™® ;)
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
jmp34
Posts: 3
Joined: 17. May 2018, 15:27

Re: [Solved] Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by jmp34 »

Hi,
I'm encountering a similar problem. I just installed the latest VirtualBox 5.2.12 on Windows 7 yesterday, then set up a CentOS distribution to run in it. I got through the initial CentOS configuration and saw the CentOS desktop, shut it down and launched it again, saw the CentOS desktop again, then shut it down and shut down my PC. This morning I started my PC, launched VirtualBox and got an error dialog with caption "Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object". I've attached a screenshot with all the details. I rebooted my PC, tried launching VirtualBox and got the same thing again. I haven't tried reinstalling VirtualBox yet, but based on the experience of the initial poster of this thread, I'm guessing that's not going to help. Do you have any suggestions ? Thanks
Attachments
VirtualBoxError1.jpg
VirtualBoxError1.jpg (62.6 KiB) Viewed 60819 times
socratis
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Location: Greece

Re: [Solved] Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by socratis »

jmp34 wrote:I haven't tried reinstalling VirtualBox yet, but based on the experience of the initial poster of this thread, I'm guessing that's not going to help. Do you have any suggestions ?
Any more suggestions than the ones presented? No. You haven't even tried those to begin with...

If you haven't tried re-installing VirtualBox... Problem A, may sound like problem B, but it may not be the same. So, try to re-install VirtualBox.
  1. Uninstall VirtualBox. Your VMs are going to be untouched. Reboot.
  2. You may want to clean up your registry and/or filesystem at this point. CCleaner is a freeware utility that could help you. Mind the installation, it comes with "offers" from 3rd parties, known as "bundleware". Also, check out Device Cleanup program that helps you to remove any unused devices from your computer, mainly multiple "Host-Only Adapter #n".
  3. Download (if you haven't already) the latest VirtualBox and its matching ExtPack. Store them in a common location, i.e. not on "Desktop", or "Documents", but to "Public/Downloads" for example.
  4. Uninstall (don't simply disable) all 3rd party antivirus. If you're afraid about your computer being vulnerable, pull the Ethernet plug, disconnect your WiFi, don't go browsing around.
  5. Locate the downloaded file in Windows Explorer. Right-click on the installer and select "Run-as-Administrator", even if you are the administrator. At the end of the installation, choose to "Start Oracle VM VirtualBox". Do not worry if your VMs do not show up.
  6. If you're going to install the ExtPack, go to File » Preferences » Extensions. Click on the icon with the orange, down-pointing arrow on the right. Select the ExtPack from the previous steps.
  7. Quit VirtualBox. Re-start VirtualBox as you would normally, i.e. from the Desktop shortcut or the Start menu.
  8. Update the Guest Additions (GAs) in your guest(s), if the GAs are available for a specific guest.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
jmp34
Posts: 3
Joined: 17. May 2018, 15:27

Re: [Solved] Failed to acquire the VirtualBox COM object

Post by jmp34 »

Thanks Socratis, I will try your suggestions and report back.
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