Ruined good install with Guest Additions? Advice?

[Muddy Gardener]

I installed VirtualBox to be able to run with Linux Ubunto under Windows XP. I read in the appliance I needed for a course I am taking. And it all looked fabulous. But I couldn't cut and paste between XP and my Linux environment.

Following advice on the course discussion forum, I installed Guest Additions, in the belief it was the right way to get copy and paste functionality between XP and Linux under VBox. The install complained that it couldn't find the headers for the current running kernel. But then it seemed to install fine. Lots of stuff got built. I shut down the vm, rebooted my XP, and started up again.

Now when I fire up the environment I get a message that my screen, graphics, and input devices cannot be detected. The only way forward seems to be for me to run in low graphics mode, and I don't seem to have access to the same directories and stuff as I did before.

On the menu I still have the option listed to install Guest Additions. Does this mean that it has not installed correctly?
Is there any way out of this besides trying to do a complete uninstall of VirtualBox?
If I need to uninstall are there any tips I need to know about to do this right? VBox changed a lot of settings on my machine when it installed. I am nervous about uninstall being able to retrace its steps correctly.
Is there a better way to get cut and paste between XP and Ubuntu under VBox?

Lots of questions, I know. But basically I want to sort this out as painlessly as possible. Any advice to that effect gratefully received.

[Perryg]

The complaint was real. You don't have the headers that match you running kernel.
Get to a (guests) terminal and run the following to install the necessary packages to build external modules.

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sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-generic

Then run

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sudo /etc/init.d/vboxadd setup

to build the kernel modules and reboot.
If the last commands do not work properly then install the guest additions again.

Note: copy & paste is text only. Drag'n'drop is host to linux guest only.

[Muddy Gardener]

Thanks very much Perry. I think I will backburner trying to fix it for the moment, as I don't completely understand how to do your fix, and I urgently need to try to do some classwork. And someone from my class with the same problem tried your recommendation and it didn't work for them.

To do anything my first step needs to be an uninstall, I guess. If there any special precautions I should take on uninstall - as the installation altered loads of settings that I have no idea how to put back properly - I would appreciate your advice.

[Perryg]

Probably the easiest way is to run the install again with the uninstall tag

VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall