Windows 10 Guest - Seamless Mode not so Seamless.

[grahamperrin]

… normal Windows 10 2004 …

… I'll review the problem this week …

If I'm not mistaken, I found Windows 10 20H2 properly seamless a few days ago. Today it's opaque (not seamless). Uninstalled guest additions, restarted, reinstalled, restarted, no improvement.

[AndyMH]

Don't know how this forum views 'piggybacking' on other's posts, on the LM forum it is frowned upon, so ask for forgiveness in advance .

Scenario - run win7 as a guest under linux mint, current LM20.2 Cinnamon. Preferred mode of operation = seamless and it works flawlessly. Can I still get an upgrade to win10 for free? Yes you can.

Clone the win7 VM in VB and update. Works, I now have a win10 VM.

Win not going full screen, find I have to re-install guest additions. Now get full screen. Try seamless mode. It toggles between showing seamless as*:
https://i.imgur.com/VxYYL9x.jpg
or non seamless mode as:
https://i.imgur.com/K6RxRSq.jpg
Seems it is failing to set the win10 desktop transparent. For comparison, this is win7 in seamless mode, showing my LM desktop as normal:
https://i.imgur.com/womAoeT.png

Also found that initially the win menu background was transparent - difficult to get at the shutdown commands and had to Alt+F4, turned off 3D accelaration in VB settings and that fixed the problem. Also told VB that it was win10 not win7 in setting > general > basic (didn't seem to make any difference).

Virtualbox: 6.1.26 r145957 - Qt5.12.8
guest additions: 6.1.26
extension pack: 6.1.26 r145957
Graphics controller: VBoxSVGA
Have also attached the log file if it helps.

Base hardware is a Thinkpad T430, i7-3632, 16GB RAM with 8GB allocated to the win10 VM and an external 2560x1080 monitor.

'Proper' seamless mode would be nice.

* sorry tried the img tags and failed.

[ofthecent]

The seamless feature works intermittently. It's bizarre. First, I was getting no difference between the full-screen mode and the seamless mode. Then the seamless mode started working correctly. Then it stopped working after I maximized the window. There is definitely something going on.

[csmccarron]

Any update on a fix for Seamless Mode? It is acting like full screen mode now.

[csmccarron]

This is still broken in VirtualBox v7.0.

[vansid]

I'm having the same problem, seamless mode is basically just fullscreen mode. Here is some info, please let me know if more info needs to be provided:

VirtualBox v7.0.2 r154219
Host: Ubuntu Linux 22.04, x64, kernel 5.15.0-56-generic
Guest: Windows 10, x64, 22H2
Guest Additions: 7.02 r154219
Extension Pack: 7.02 r154219

Does anyone have a fix or a workaround?

[csmccarron]

Host: Windows 10 22H2 19045.2728
Guest: Windows 10 22H2 19045.2673

As you can see from the images below, seamless mode is broken. Been this way for a very long time. I am using the VBoxSVGA graphics controller and have Enable 3D Acceleration disabled because it too is broken. Enabling 3D Acceleration does not fix the seamless mode issue, instead it causes more issues. When 3D Acceleration is enabled the guest seems to have issues transparency on & off and does not draw objects correctly in the guest. Seamless mode starts out kinda working and then as soon as you open the start menu in the VM it basically goes into a full screen mode, but I can still use the hosts task bar.

VM Running in a Window

VM Running in Window

Seamless1.jpg (94.88 KiB) Viewed 544 times

VM Running Full Screen

VM Running Full Screen

Seamless2.jpg (39.75 KiB) Viewed 544 times

VM Running in Seamless

VM Running in Seamless

Seamless3.jpg (114.2 KiB) Viewed 544 times

I do hope one day this will be fixed.

[scottgus1]

For all broken-Seamless sufferers, for troubleshooting purposes, when each new version comes out, in addition to trying your existing VM, try a fresh new VM with a fresh new install of the OS and GAs, just to see if this might be something damaged in the OS.