How to enable logging for the .MSI host installer of VirtualBox

There are two logs which are needed for an in-depth analysis: The installer log and the driver installation log of Windows itself. Please provide both logs when asked for them.

Cleaning Up

If you are experiencing installation problems on Windows hosts you might want to run the Microsoft Installer CleanUp Utility. It's available for free here: ​http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 It does not uninstall VirtualBox itself but provides a way to clean the registry from leftover data of former installation procedures.

Installer Log

The following steps apply for the Windows version of VirtualBox.

1. Go to Start -> "Run ..."
2. Type in "regedit.exe" and press Enter
3. Navigate to the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer" (Left pane). If the key itself doesn't exist, just create it.
4. In the right pane, right click and choose "New" -> "String value"
5. Name the value "Logging".
6. Double click on the new created "Logging" value and set the value to "voicewarmupx"
7. Close regedit.exe

After the above steps the VirtualBox host installer should produce a log starting with "MSI" in your temporary directory the next time you're starting the installer.

On 32-bit Windows XP, the temporary directory is usually located at "C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Username>\Local Settings\Temp\".
On 64-bit Windows XP and on Vista, it can be found at "C:\Users\<Your Username>\AppData\Local\Temp".

Be sure you're picking the most recent one by sorting the files by date!

Driver Installation Log

Enable logging in the registry: In key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\" set/create a value called "LogLevel" of the type DWORD and set it to the hexadecimal value 4800FFFF. This will enable the verbose driver logging.

Either in "C:\Windows" or in "C:\Windows\Inf" you'll then find some logs called

• setupapi.log
• setupapi.app.log
• setupapi.dev.log

To be sure that only the needed information for VirtualBox will be in these files, please delete (or rename) them before starting the VirtualBox installation.

After you ran the VirtualBox installer please attach these logs to your bug report.