Well, Innotek released another version of Portable Virtual Box a few weeks ago and I haven’t got around to releasing the new version. I just checked the comments to the old version (1.4.0) and I didn’t realize the community that was looking for this. I’m used to my site being spammed with links, but I guess I’ve got that under control. I didn’t realize all those comments were valid. 
Now I feel embarrassed. All these people are looking at my nasty code. I’d like to clean up my code so I may be releasing a cleaned up version, but this one is done. Also in the new version, I’ll try to clean up the registry entries that are left behind. I really need to start a wiki project or something for this to better documet it. As of version 1.4.0, rebooting isn’t necessary (for the USB drivers).
So here it is, download Portable VirtualBox 1.5.0.
I’m also investigating the issue with Portable VirtualBox breaking the currently installed VirtualBox. I will have a solution for it, but don’t expect it. I do have 18 hours of college and 22 hours of work a week not to mention a wife and part time computer business and web development! Oh MY!
As in the last version, make sure you edit VBStart.bat and change the 4 variables, then run VBStart.bat when you are ready. Everything is stored in \Documents\.VirtualBox of the drive you ran it from. So if you run it from your desktop, it’s probably going to be in C:\Documents\.VirtualBox, atleast by default.
Do note that this is for Windows only, and is made to run from a USB drive (although it doesn’t throttle the number of writes, so use a platter drive such as an iPod classic, not flash based media). As always: Enjoy (and Share).
Edit: I missed a line that says you need to reboot to get USB working. Just ignore that line completely. USB should work (once you enable it in VirtualBox settings).
14 Responses to “Portable Virtual Box 1.5.0 Released”
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:11 am
You are a star, thank you very much, I love what you are doing with this, been playing since 1.4.
I’m not sure what this version brings to the party apart from ‘neater’ batch files
but have just run it and am now happily ising my Vista box on my XP machine 
Ever thought of playing with NSIS to create a ‘genuine’ portable app? It’s a lovley little scripting engine that allows registry write, delete, save etc in EXE format for a neater apearance…
Check out http://portableapps.com/development for more information (like you /i have little time for this sort of stuff but if someone were to have a fiddle I’m sure the community would much appreciate it!).
Thank you for your efforts, keep up the great work!!!
LilNick
September 19th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Can’t wait to try the new version
But it will have to wait a bit anyways…
Till then: Thx a lot z0rz
September 21st, 2007 at 7:51 pm
You’re awesome. I’ve been looking for a way to carry my virtual os around. And Virtualbox, no less! I was indeed wondering if you were planning on continuing on this. Thank you so much.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:11 am
[…] Download: Portable Virtual Box 1.5.0 […]
October 26th, 2007 at 7:23 am
I made some minor tweaks thinking might help some. In the vbstart.bat file it will use the USBDrive info to assign drive letters. Since you may run this on more than one computer the drive letters may change. All the code is Eric’s just jumped it around a bit. I’m currently running it with 1.5.2.
REM VBStart.bat START
@echo off
::Portable VirtualBox 1.5.2
:::::
::INFORMATION
:::::
::This script makes VirtualBox portable.
::Note: USB devices are not supported unless you register VBoxUSB.sys and reboot
::You can register VBoxUSB.sys with supinstall
:::::
::Thank Eric Boehs of z0rz.com for making this script
:::::
::Changes these 4 variables accordingly
::Get drive letter, we’ll use it to set our variables
Goto getdriveletter
:setenviron
SET VBOX_APP_LOC=%USBDrive%:\Program Files\VirtualBox
SET VBOX_USER_HOME=%VBOX_APP_LOC%\Settings\.Virtualbox
SET VBOX_NAME=WinPlatform
SET AUTO_START_VM=FALSE
Echo Loading VirtualBox 1.5.2….
Echo Path information:
::Echo USBDrive - %USBDrive%
Echo Path points to: %VBOX_APP_LOC%
Echo User settings: %VBOX_USER_HOME%
::Echo.
::Echo FYI: Registration pop-up will cease once you build a virtual box.
::Echo or set in .Virtualbox.xml settings to
::Echo If you have problems (on 1.5.2 only) on 1st exit removing SVC,
::Echo run unreg.bat and then run again and problem should go away.
::Echo It only happens on 1st runs.
sleep 3
::Now we’re ready to move on
goto startreg
:::::
::Don’t edit anything below this line unless you know what you’re doing
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::Get the current drive that the script is being run from
:getdriveletter
FOR /F “tokens=3″ %%i IN (’”dir %%0 | find “:\”"‘) DO SET USBDrive=%%i
SET USBDrive=%USBDrive:~0,1%
cls
::Now set paths
goto setenviron
:startreg
::Register the Need Files, Set the config directory, and change the VBMachine’s location
::to that if this usb drive
:registerVB
REM SET VBOX_USER_HOME=%USBDrive%:%VBOX_USER_HOME%
supuninstall.exe
supinstall.exe
VBoxSVC.exe /reregserver
regsvr32.exe /s VBoxC.dll
usbuninstall.exe
usbinstall.exe
cls
:runVB
IF %AUTO_START_VM%==TRUE GOTO autoStart
IF %AUTO_START_VM%==FALSE GOTO normalStart
GOTO unregisterVB
:autoStart
nircmd execmd VBAutoStart.bat %VBOX_NAME%
GOTO exit
:normalStart
nircmd.exe execmd VBNormalStart.bat
GOTO exit
:exit
REM VBStart.bat END
November 5th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
I’d love to use your scripting… But I’m getting an error about ‘the VirtualBox kernel driver’ not being installed.
Have you any suggestions? I can only access Current_User registry and only a few directories on my work pc.
Thanks!
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I’d like to help with development of this project. I have already created a fully portable version of Virtual PC (portable.lococobra.com) and I am interested in making a version of Portable Virtual Box as well.
If you are alright with it, I’m going to use your code as a basis for a new version. If not, I’ll start from scratch. Either way, thank you for your time and effort on this program
December 21st, 2007 at 12:07 am
I’ve created an AutoIt launcher for this. It has been compiled into an exe to allow it to be portable as well. I can post the uncompiled script if anyone is interested.
Some things I’ve added:
VBoxManage setproperty vdifolder
VBoxManage setproperty machinefolder
VBoxManage registerimage disk
VBoxManage createvm -name
VBoxManage modifyvm VMname -hda workingdir \VDI\ VMname & .vmdk
VBoxManage modifyvm VMname -bioslogoimagepath imagepath
VBoxManage modifyvm VMname -bioslogodisplaytime 3000
VBoxManage modifyvm VMname -bioslogofadein on
VBoxManage modifyvm VMname -bioslogofadeout on
VBoxManage modifyvm VMname -biosbootmenu disabled
VBoxManage sharedfolder add VMname -name Sharename -hostpath Share
I can run this from anywhere as it pumps the required data pulled from it’s environment as arguments for VBoxManage. The users My Documents folder is mapped as a share, a custom boot logo that fades in and out, etc.
Right now the VM name, and the share info are all hardcoded in the script. From here it could either prompt for user input or read from a local ini. If anyone wants to play with it or develop it further? I’ll post the script.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Hello red_sleeves,
Please post your script! I, and I’m sure others, would like to take a look at it.
Thanks!
February 20th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
red_sleeves, please send me the code, you can get my email at http://portable.lococobra.com
March 4th, 2008 at 8:03 am
I’m interested to know more about the exe files SUPINSTALL.EXE and SUPUNINSTALL.EXE - What do they do? Why are they needed? Googling them retrurns only 2 pages, so these are not common files.
You state you can register VBoxUSB.sys using these utilities, but looking at the source code for them shows the following:-
PAPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADDINGXXPADDINGPADD
Why would you need to Pad out the file size?
Have you recompiled any of the VirtualBox binaries as there is a clear discrepency between file sizes of certain files.? If so, could you make the source code available for analysis.
Also - why has google got this page blocked as it believes it contains malware?
May 12th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I tried to run this on Windows XP Home Edition, and I faced with following issues:
After fixing some configuration paths, tasklist.exe and regsvr32.exe could not be found.
I solved this by reinstalling normal VirtualBox, starting a Windows XP Pro in it, copying %systemroot%\system32\tasklist.exe and regsvr32.exe into the folder which “Portable” VirtualBox files exist.
I also made some fixes, and I do not belive how you could do some easy works such a hard way….
OK, here we go:
## The default paths are changed:
::Changes these 4 variables accordingly
::Use full path excluding drive letter. For example if the full path is F:\a\b\c then use \a\b\c,
::the drive letter is found automatically.
SET VBOX_APP_LOC=%~p0
SET VBOX_USER_HOME=%VBOX_APP_LOC%\.VirtualBox
————————————————————————————————————–
## This piece of code:
::Get the current drive that the script is being run from
:getdriveletter
FOR /F “tokens=3″ %%i IN (’”dir %%0 | find “:\””‘) DO SET USBDrive=%%i
SET USBDrive=%USBDrive:~0,1%
cls
## Has been replaced with the following:
::Get the current drive that the script is being run from
:getdriveletter
set USBDrive=%~d0
————————————————————————————————————–
## So, the following variable has been changed
SET VBOX_USER_HOME=%USBDrive%:%VBOX_USER_HOME%
## with this: (the colon sign “:” is wiped out)
SET VBOX_USER_HOME=%USBDrive%%VBOX_USER_HOME%
I’m still thinking, did you aimed something special where you are assigning the USBDrive variable’s value?
Result:
VirtualBox is working at first look, but there is an error on close step: Error: Search filter does not recognised
Wishes:
Before all, you must consider adding a Readme.txt and TODO.txt I coudn’t understand which one to run at first.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:59 am
I am new to this site, but I had to register to say I really appreciate the work that has been done on Portable Virtual Box 1.5.0. I have been using it for some time now, and it works awesome! However lately, I have been trying to find a newer versions of a Portable Virtual Box and I can say that I have found a Portable Virtual Box 1.6.2!!
http://www.german-nlite.de/index.php?showtopic=14306&st=0
I know its all in German, but it is fairly simple to download it. I dont know any programming, but I am an avid user of Virtual Box. I really suggest for you to take a look at it. Oh yeah, I really thank everybody that has been putting the wrench time into this.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:02 am
One more thing that I noticed from what I said that maybe misinterpreted; the program is not in German, just the website is in German. So dont worry if you cant read German and having to use the program.