Cannot start VirtualBox after reinstalling on another disk

I had my VirtualBox 5 installed on C drive (Windows 10) but since I ran out of space I uninstalled it, downloaded the latest vbox from oracle's website (5.2.14) and installed anew on another disk. I ran the installer as the administrator and configured the installation path pointing at the newly created folder on the other disk and the installation ended pretty quickly, all the files seem to be extracted in the right folder but when I want to start the vbox I get the error message:

'Failure to aquire the VirtualBox COM object.'

Below in the details pane there's this:

Document is empty.

Location: 'C:\Users\user_name\.VirtualBox\VirtualBox.xml', line 1 (0), column 1. (...) Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)

The file is actually empty. I tried to find out what the error code means and the only useful thing I found is that it means the vbox is not installed and the installer should be run as administrator. This did not help.

Copying and pasting the contents of VirtualBox.xml-prev, even after modifications - also did not help.

I does not look like I have a service that would be related to vbox still running.

Can somebody please explain what is the issue and how to fix it?