When Sun was bought out by Oracle, many wondered what was going to happen to things like Java, MySQL, and VirtualBox. Well given the way trying to upgrade to version 2.2.2 on Windows XP totally nuked my working installation of 2.1.4 which I can now neither remove or repair, I think I’ll be saying buh bye to VirtualBox and hello to VMWare.
The VBox 2.2.2 install runs and then rolls back. This has been described in the VirtualBox forums, but the solution there doesn’t work for me. Not only that, running the old 2.1.4 installer in Repair mode does the same thing. So rather than waste anymore time, I’m simply noting it here. Yeah I could login and post to the forum but after wasting half a day on this problem, I’d rather just switch to VMWare which we use at work anyway. It’s a real shame when you can’t get the installer to work right. Color me annoyed…
Update: Since I’m a glutton for punishment and loathe defeat, I searched the VBox web site and found in the wiki a link to Microsoft’s Installer Cleanup tool. After running the tool I ran the 2.2.2 installer again. Like the first time I ran it, it hung at the very end. But while the installer is botched, apparently it installed enough of VirtualBox for it to work. So at least it works now even though as far as Windows is concerned the installation was interrupted. Now only slightly annoyed.