WebOS Emulator error E_ACCESSDENIED (0x80070005), The solution

I am currently evaluating development frameworks and mobile platforms for my company, so we can choose our path in our next multi-platform mobile applications (to develop specific apps for each platform is just too expensive). This took me to WebOS, clearly a small player, but with HP at the wheel, maybe it will get somewhere. So, lets look at it: install the SDK, start the emulator and…

… something went wrong: was trying to start Palm WebOS Emulator, version 2.1, and this error always popped up:

The object functionality is limited
code E_ACCESSDENIED (0x80070005), component Machine, interface IMachine, callee IUnknown

and I’ve found the solution!

As far as I can tell, this is somehow related to VirtualBox, some kind of incompatibility with the VirtualBox I am using (3.2.12 now). When I ran palm-emulator using the ‘–debug’ flag the following “trace” showed up:

ps: strange thing – I am using the x64 version of the SDK, so why did it install in “c:\program files (x86)”?

“ImageManager.GetVM”: definitely a VirtualBox vs WebOSEmulator problem. The obvious solution? Install an older VirtualBox

The Solution

To fix this… just uninstall VirtualBox 3.2.x (or 3.1.x) and install VirtualBox 3.0.14; after you install, go to “c:\users\[your-user-name]\.virtualbox” (or “%HOMEPATH%\.virtualbox”) and delete (or rename) the VirtualBox.xml file – and it works! Yes, that’s all that it took… not bright stuff, HP. HP says somewhere in the SDK download page that “The webOS emulator does not yet run on Virtualbox 4.0. Use the link below to download version 3.2.“… not correct, thanks a lot.

ps: I am using Windows 7, webOs sdk and VirtualBox, all 64-bit.