VirtualBox not launching - "Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object."

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Hey guys! Just installed VirtualBox, but whenever I launch the application, it crashes and shows me this:

imgur/a/brnSElD add a .com after ‘imgur’, cant post images yet smh…

Output of pacman -Qn | grep "virtualbox":

linux514-virtualbox-host-modules 6.1.26-13
virtualbox 6.1.26-1
virtualbox-guest-iso 6.1.26-1

pacman -Qm | grep virtualbox:

virtualbox-ext-oracle 6.1.28-1

Kernel version: 5.14.10-1-MANJARO

I’m struggling to find any fixes online, could someone help me out?

Edit: I was able to solve the issue thanks to u/Face_Plant_Some_More on reddit!

Virtual Box 6.1.26 is not compatible with Linux 5.14.x series kernels. Downgrade you Linux Kernel to one belonging to the 5.13.x series. Alternatively, keep you current kernel, and upgrade to Virtual Box 6.1.28.

Currently, the latest version in the Manjaro repos is 6.1.26, so I installed the .tar.zst for Vbox 6.1.28 from the Arch repos, ran pacman -U pkg.tar.zst and it worked!

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That’s bad advice as 5.13 has been EOL (End of Life) for over a month now and will not receive any more updates. Instead, install 5.10 LTS (Long Term Support) if you need an alternative to the latest stable kernel.

Manjaro is not Arch. While doing that may work sometimes, it is unsupported and may break things. Instead, switch to the Manjaro testing or unstable branch if you want newer packages than what is in stable.

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I have Virtualbox 6.1.26 running on kernel 5.14.10 without problems

Also, you shouldn’t install an extension package for a different Virtualbox version. That probably is going to bring troubles.

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You don’t have to explicitly install a different version of the extension pack. There is just a difference in version currently between the AUR virtualbox-ext-oracle package (6.1.28.1) and the community virtualbox package (6.1.26-1).

So anybody trying to avoid the annoyance of manually updating the extension pack is likely to be affected.