Running VirtualBox from a command line

As I’ve mentioned in the past, VirtualBox is my favourite of all the virtualisation tools out there. I use it to run Kubuntu on my Windows XP machine, for web development purposes.

Anyway, I have just the one “guest” machine, Kubuntu, so it seems a bit tedious to have to start VirtualBox each time. Naturally, there is another way – a command line shortcut.

Cutting to the chase, I’m assuming you know how to create a shortcut. I’ll also assume you’re using the latest version of VirtualBox. Right, here’s the shortcut…

"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" startvm xxx

Where xxx is the name of your virtual guest.

And that’s it really. Oh, and if you want to make it pretty, I even found a Kubuntu icon to make that shortcut look even more appropriate.