Table of Contents
As installation of VirtualBox varies depending on your host operating system, we provide installation instructions in three separate chapters for Windows, Linux and Solaris, respectively.
For the various versions of Windows that we support as host operating systems, please refer to Sectioná1.4, “Supported host operating systems”.
In addition, Windows Installer 1.1 or higher must be present on your system. This should be the case if you have all recent Windows updates installed.
The VirtualBox installation can be started
either by double-clicking on its Microsoft Installer archive (MSI file)
or by entering
msiexec /i VirtualBox.msi
on the command line.
In either case, this will display the installation welcome dialog and allow you to choose where to install VirtualBox to and which components to install. In addition to the VirtualBox application, the following components are available:
This package contains special drivers for your Windows host that VirtualBox requires to fully support USB devices inside your virtual machines.
This package contains extra networking drivers for your Windows host that VirtualBox needs to support Host Interface Networking (to make your VM's virtual network cards accessible from other machines on your physical network).
Depending on your Windows configuration, you may see warnings about "unsigned drivers" or similar. Please select "Continue" on these warnings as otherwise VirtualBox might not function correctly after installation.
The installer will create a "VirtualBox" group in the programs startup folder which allows you to launch the application and access its documentation.
With standard settings, VirtualBox will be installed for all users on the local system. In case this is not wanted, you have to invoke the installer as follows:
msiexec /i VirtualBox.msi ALLUSERS=2
This will install VirtualBox only for the current user.
As we use the Microsoft Installer, VirtualBox can be safely uninstalled at any time by choosing the program entry in the "Add/Remove Programs" applet in the Windows Control Panel.