VirtualBox error 1603: “Installation of MSI failed.
It’s happened on several of my systems with every VirtualBox release since 3.0: “VirtualBox Setup Ended Prematurely.” The suggestions I found online didn’t help. Here is a quick and simple solution.
VirtualBox doesn’t uninstall its previous version’s device drivers, and the old and new seem to conflict. The next time you install the latest release, everything may go as it should.
However, after short time, some users are greeted by the following fairly useless screens:
Slightly better than error 1602
Solution: Remove the VirtualBox network device driver.
Open the Control Panel, then from there, open the Device Manager.
In recent Windows versions, you can click on “Control Panel” from the start menu, then type in the word “device” into the search bar near the upper-left.
Click "View Hardware and Devices"
Open the “Network Adapters” tree and right-click on anything mentioning “VirtualBox”. Choose “Uninstall” from the context menu.
Removing the problem
If greeted with the following, check the box to remove the Host-Only Ethernet Adapter driver.
Yes, get rid of it all.
(Edit: Please note David Braun’s useful comment below)
Now reboot (this is Windows), and your VirtualBox installation should go smoothly.
It would appear to be a DLL issue:
http://forum.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=99926
The MSI needs updated DLLs.
@Dietrich Schmitz
From the article linked by Dietrich:
Without knowing the development situation at Sun, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and go with “Sun has a reason for this decision.” It would be surprising, otherwise. Thanks for the link.
Hi,
I presume from extrapolation of the author’s tag here, that you may be successive poster on a thread over at the Virtualbox forums. If so (or even if not), please consider offering this article in a reproduced format to the admins at the Virtualbox forums (http://forums.virtualbox.org) for inclusion as a sticky.
This would likely save VBox users a lot of unnecessary hassles trying to resolve the 1603 error, without too much searching.
Of course, please note your account signature with this excellent site. Beyond solving my problems with the latest VBox install, it’s also proven a damn good read!
Thanks for the long-sought help. I previously hadn’t been able to upgrade past VirtualBox 2.2.0, which I installed in April, 2009. Your advice wasn’t quite sufficient, though. After removing the VirtualBox Host Only Adaptor Driver and rebooting, I still got the 1603 error message.
I had a bit of inspiration when I thought to re-run the original 2.2.0 installation program. This asked me if I wanted to remove or repair VirtualBox. Fearing I would forever lose my virtual machines if I removed VirtualBox, I checked the “repair” box, and that program ran to completion. Then, I rebooted and ran the version 3.0.12 installation, which finally succeeded!
I knew from past experience that a rerun of the same version installation had a “repair” option and suspected it might be needed for two reasons: 1) I remembered that when I originally installed version 2.2.0, I HAD to use the Host Only adaptor, because the other adapter types wouldn’t work (leading me to suspect something was corrupt), and 2) subsequently, whenever I opened up the the network configuration, I got a strange message referencing a “USB” subsystem error, which didn’t stop me from accessing the network configuration, but, again, indicated corruption of some kind.
I had already rerun the version 2.2.0 installation (with “repair”) several months ago, which, by itself, didn’t help at the time. My current impression is that removing the adapter driver (per you directions) simplified the configuration enough so that the “repair” was then able to put things in proper order for the 3.0.12 installation to succeed.
If Sun can’t incorporate an automated fix into the VirtualBox installation program, they should certainly give clear instruction in the User Manual on what to do for this cryptic and impassable error.
This worked beautifully for me, thanks!
David Braun’s advice worked for me. I got the 1603 error despite, it turned out, not have the virtualbox adapter installed. But rerunning the previous installer – in my case 3.0.6, choosing the fix option and rebooting then alllowed 3.0.12 to work without a glitch
Error: 1603 – Installation of msi failed…
Non existent drive H:
I discovered that I had an orphan installation of VBox installed to a (now) non-existent drive – yet I still had links to the drive. Uninstalling the orphan installation worked for me. Then installed VBox 3.1.2 no problem.
wow function :X
Didn’t work for me. It just keeps asking me for an MSI I can’t find (possibly the uninstaller for the old version? Which I can’t find in the installation directory either).
I had a similar problem – error 1625 – turned out to be a permission problem. You’re post got me on the right track – so thanks.
Details of my problem/solution here: http://mampersat.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/virtualbox-install-error-1625/