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Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 23. Feb 2013, 19:47
by sandy
Friends, I am installing VirtualBox-4.2.4-81684-Win.exe in my WIndows 7 environment and will install OEL in it. It was earlier installed along with relevant extension packs but was corrupted, hence I removed it from everywhere, I made sure that there were no registry entries also. But now while I am trying to install it, in initial phase I am getting this error messages 'The folder path 'Virtual Box'contains an invalid character.' , i tried many things to fix the issues but none of them is working. I need this to install badly as I need to test lot of things in my Virtual box. Any help/inputs/advice's will be highly appreciated.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 26. Feb 2013, 02:42
by sandy
Still waiting for replies , friends !!

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 26. Feb 2013, 03:27
by Perryg
Hard to help when we don't know exactly what you did as far as you say you removed everything. Did you remove entries from the registry as well? (hopefully not)

In 4 years I have never see this error, so you have to provide exact error messages and any Windows event that could point to the cause.
Search for virtualbox.xml and see if it still exists and remove it as well. Maybe that will help

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 11. Sep 2014, 19:15
by beth
Hi - I am receiving this same error - did you ever find a fix??

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 12. Sep 2014, 07:12
by KyleT
'Portable-VirtualBox' is not a valid short file name.

This is the error message I get when trying to install or uninstall V-box. (V-box still shows up in my programs and features, but nowhere else on the machine that I can find.)

It's been a long time since I deleted my original V-box, but I'm pretty sure I just wiped the files that I could find instead of going through the windows uninstaller (Yes, stupid, I know.). I have no clue if I wiped the registry files, but I very well might have if I could find them at the time.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 12. Sep 2014, 14:36
by Perryg
'Portable-VirtualBox' is not a valid short file name.
We don't support Portable-VirtualBox.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 12. Sep 2014, 19:34
by KyleT
That error code came up when trying to install

VirtualBox-4.3.16-95972-Win

I'm not trying to install portable virtual box. If I have the wrong download please let me know.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 12. Sep 2014, 20:02
by Perryg
I have no idea what you have or where you got it but the short name came from something. The only place I have seen the name is when the user was running portable-virtualbox. Have you ever installed portable-virtualbox?

Downloads come from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 13. Sep 2014, 04:20
by KyleT
That's where I got the current download from.

I think I tried to install portable virtual-box once. If I'm remembering correctly it failed spectacularly.

I'm guessing that I have remnants of the old v-box and, apparently, the attempted portable v-box swimming around in my system and gumming things up. Is there any way to purge all of them from the system without using the uninstall feature, because apparently I broke that, and preferably without having to reset my system to factory standards?

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 13. Sep 2014, 14:57
by Perryg
Search your userland for VirtualBox.xml It will be a hidden file and does not get removed during uninstall because it houses the VirtualBox control file that allows you to remove VirtualBox and install without loosing your guests. Delete this file and then start or install VirtualBox again and see if that helps. If you have guests you will need to register them again but that is simple by using the add feature.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 13. Sep 2014, 22:45
by KyleT
Looked. Can't find the file. And yes, I made sure the search would turn up hidden files - all it turned up was the v-box download.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 14. Sep 2014, 01:03
by mpack
Please give the exact - to the letter - error message.

Re: Needs help in installation issues

Posted: 19. Sep 2014, 04:33
by KyleT
mpack wrote:Please give the exact - to the letter - error message.
"'Portable-VirtualBox' is not a valid short file name."