In this tutorial you will learn how to fix the error "Failed to install the Extension Pack" when installing the virtual box extension pack on Virtualbox.
Virtualbox extension pack enables support for Support for USB 2.0/ USB 3.0 devices, VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol, disk encryption, NVMe and PXE boot for Intel cards, so this package should be installed in order to be able to use the above mentioned devices on your virtual machine.
For example: You have an usb device which you want to plug into your virtual machine, then to do this you need to install the extension pack. However, you got the error below which doesn't allow you to install the extension pack.
Error code:
Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: ExtPackManagerWrap
Interface: IExtPackManager {70401eef-c8e9-466b-9660-45cb3e9979e4}
VBoxExtPackRegister returned VERR_VERSION_MISMATCH, pReg=0000000000000000 ErrInfo='Helper version mismatch - expected 0x30000 got 0x3'.
What does this error mean?
The error above means you are installing the wrong extension pack, and since it's not the right extension pack it won't be supported by the version of Virtualbox that you have installed on your system.
Follow the steps below to fix this issue
Step 1 - Download Virtualbox
Method 1
To install virtualbox via terminal, simply type the following command
sudo apt install virtualbox
Next press Y to continue installing VirtualBox
Wait for the setup to finish, once the installation has been completed Virtualbox will be listed on your Applications/Menu
Method 2
To download VirtualBox without using terminal, simply go to official website of VirtualBox and click Download, then go to Linux Distributions
And choose the Linux distro that you are using
Step 2 - Download the Extension pack
Method 1
The below command will install the correct extension pack, simply launch terminal and type the command below
sudo apt install virtualbox-ext-pack
Method 2
If the above command doesn't work, you can download manually both files Virtualbox and Virtualbox Extension pack
Before you download the extension pack from the official source "https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads" , make sure you are downloading the same version with Virtualbox
On the url above you will be able to download the latest version of virtualbox and VirtualBox Extension Pack
How to find out which version I'm using?
1) Open Virtualbox
2)Click over the Help button and go to About VirtualBox
And you should see the About window which tells you which version of Virtualbox you are using.
For example in my case I'm using : Version 6.1.26_Ubuntu r145957 , this means I'll need to download the extension pack version 6.1.26.
To download the extension pack simply click over Extension Pack hyperlink and the download should start
Step 3 - Install Virtualbox Extension pack
The virtualbox extension pack can be installed via two ways
1- By running the downloaded extension pack directly from the downloads folder, to do this simply double click on it
and you should see this pop up window, click the button " Install"
Next, you need to accept Virtualbox's Lincese, on this step you will see that both buttons are greyed out and can't be clicked, that's because you need to scroll down to bottom in order for buttons to be active, so scroll down to bottom and simply click the "I Agree" button to proceed with the installation
Once the extension pack it's installed, you should a similar pop as shown below
By installing it via VirtualBox
1) Run Virtualbox
2) Go to File and click to Preference
3) Next go to Extensions
and click the plus(+) button to import the extension pack that you downloaded from the official website
select the extension pack and click the Open button, then all you need to do is follow the installation steps as explained above on STEP #3 by accepting the License of VirtualBox.
How to verify if extension pack was installed correctly?
1) Launch Virtualbox
2) Right click over the Virtual Machine where you want to use the USB or any other device supported by the Extension pack
3) Go to USB section
Then at the right you should see all USB protocols supported, this means the extension pack is installed correctly and you should be able to use the USB or any other device on your Virtual Machine
Conclusion
In this tutorial you learned how to fix the error " failed to install the extension pack" when trying to install the extension pack on virtualbox.
And different methods how to install VirtualBox and VirtualBox extension pack on Linux by using the terminal or downloading them manually.