Fixing “VBoxManage Is Not Recognized” in PowerShell (Windows + VirtualBox)

Fixing “VBoxManage Is Not Recognized” in PowerShell on Windows

If you’ve tried running VBoxManage in PowerShell and hit the error “VBoxManage is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet,” it usually means Windows can’t find the VirtualBox executable on your PATH. In this post, I’ll show you why this happens and the exact steps to fix it on Windows so you can get back to managing your virtual machines from the command line.

🔍 What does this mean?

PowerShell couldn’t find VBoxManage.exe because the VirtualBox install directory was not in your PATH environment variable.

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✅ How We Fixed It (Verified VBoxManage Works)

We ran VBoxManage using its full path:

& "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" --version

✅ Result (Success Output)

7.2.6r172322

🎯 What this confirmed

• VirtualBox is installed correctly

• VBoxManage.exe exists and works

• The only issue was that PowerShell didn’t know where to find it automatically

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This is pretty cumbersome, right?

Let’s add this utility to the PATH so it’s easier to use going forward.

• Open the start menu and type the word "edit" (without the quotes) and click Edit the system environment variables

• Click Environment variables at the bottom

• Make sure the Path variable is already selected under user

• Click Edit and then click New and add C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox if this is the location of the binary.

Going forward, you can start using the VBoxManage utility to manage your Virtual machines.