I wondered whether it was viable to learn how all this worked and to write a script for automating these tasks, but after some consideration I decided to go big and build a full distribution which would be as close as possible to the official one, only without hardening. However, that occurred to be far from simple because installation relies on some obscure system API and requires drivers installation and COM components registration. Table of Contents » Problem StatementĪt first, I wanted to keep it simple by just rebuilding the binary components and copying them on top of the version installed from the official distribution. However, if you need information on building earlier versions of VB or auxiliary libraries you can always get it from the history of changes. This instruction is being updated from time to time, and at the moment it is adapted to building VB version 6.1.18. So when, in the end, I got it working I thought it was worth documenting in full details in a separate article. Well, looks like we'll have to.Īlthough the build instructions are described on the official project Wiki, they are incomplete and somewhat outdated, while the build procedure often fails with vague error messages. The only reply from developers sounds like «if you don't want it build it from source code yourself». Numerous requests to add a user-controlled exclusion list, or an option to disable hardening, are all left unanswered. Worst case is, the conflicting application or update has to be uninstalled, or VB itself has to be downgraded to the version 4.3.12 which was the latest one without hardening. Users have to wait for at least a month till the new VB version is released with the proper exclusions added. Although the intentions were good, the implementation happened to cause numerous conflicts with totally legitimate products such as antiviruses, cryptographic modules and even some updates of the Windows itself, and when such a conflict occurs VB simply stops working. It is a well-known fact to many users of the Windows version of VirtualBox (from now on, VB not to be confused with Visual Basic) that starting with 4.3.14 the developers added the so-called «hardening» designed to prevent malicious injections into VB.

How to use virtualbox to compiler