Windows 10 guest desktop still full screen in Seamless mode

[Umbrathe]

Version of VirtualBox: 5.0.20-106931
Guest additions are installed
Host: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit | 4GB memory
Guest: Windows 10 Professional 64-bit | 2GB memory

The Windows 10 64-bit guest is installed properly, and everything seems to work except for Seamless mode. When the Windows 10 guest is running, the VirtualBox is constantly running in full screen. When I put it into seamless mode, it looks smoother but the desktop of Windows 10 stays full screen. I have activated, deactivated, and reactivated seamless mode, and restarted the VirtualBox each time to no avail. When I open a program or file from the host computer, say My Documents, it opens from the host computer but displays over top of the Windows 10 desktop as if seamless mode is reversed. I have also tried enabling 3D acceleration and 2D video acceleration, booting, and disabling them and booting again.

I want to only be able to view the host desktop, while being able to open programs in the mostly hidden guest OS. In the end, I want to have the host OS with links on the desktop to applications that will run in the guest OS.

Another tidbit of information is that the computer that I am working with VirtualBox on is unable to connect to the internet. This shouldn't be a problem, but for full disclosure I thought I would add it in. I also did not know which log files to attach, so in the folder provided I have VBox.log, VBox.log.1, VBox.log.2, VBox.log.3, and VBoxHardening.log.

If you need more information about the situation, please ask! Thank you in advance.

[wxl]

There are several bugs suggesting similar problems. The one I'm following is https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/15092.

The most annoying problem with all of this is that the Windows background itself does not disappear.

[Umbrathe]

That is exactly the problem that I was having. Everything works great with a Windows 10 guest, except seamless mode. Seamless is the one utility that I NEED to have work.

In the meantime, I am going to mess around with Windows 7 32-bit for now just to see if VirtualBox can even do exactly what I want it to do. I hope this issue is resolved soon, because most of the programs that I would like to run should really be using Windows 10 instead of 7.

[Steve Milner]

I am also having this problem.

Host 64bit OSX el Capitan
Guest 32bit Windows 10

This has been happening since I upgraded to Windows 10.

I really like seamless mode. I hope someone can give this some attention.

Are there any other Widows 10 Guest users that do not have this problem?

Regards,
Stephen

[mpack]

I don't understand the problem description. In seamless mode, of course the guest desktop is fullscreen - it has to be the same size as the host desktop, but invisible.

Do you actually mean that the guest desktop remains visible? If so, it would probably help if you said that rather than describe a correct behaviour.

[wxl]

I have had several problems with seamless mode in Windows 10 guests:
* Windows background appears
* nothing is visible (as if minimized)
* guest in seamless mode occupies a portion of the host screen area
* does all sorts of unpredictable business with non-Windowed windows (such as having the taskbar disappear when clicking on the start menu)

I think the OP was suggesting that the entirety of the guest desktop is displayed. They call it the full screen to differentiate it from the way it usually is, which is only a portion of the guest desktop (i.e. everything but the taskbar and Windows).

Long story short, seamless mode does not work at all as it should. I would encourage you do go download the ISO and test it out. It's free and the installed version is fully functional, barring a few personalization tweaks that are irrelevant to any sort of testing of VirtualBox.

[Umbrathe]

I am sorry for any misunderstandings from my initial post.

As I stated “When I put [Windows 10 guest] into seamless mode, it looks smoother but the desktop of Windows 10 stays full screen.” What I was trying to say is that when I press “Host+L” to put the Windows 10 guest into seamless mode, I expect the desktop to be hidden and the upper menu bar to be gone. However, when I do this the guest desktop continues to dominate the screen, the only difference being the menu bar has been removed.

I have attached a screenshot of my windows 10 guest virtual box in Seamless mode for more clarification if it is needed. As shown in the screenshot, the guest desktop isn’t hidden at all, though the menu bar is gone from the top of the screen.

Essentially, I wanted Seamless mode to work the same in Windows 10 guests as it does in all of the other Windows guests. I wanted to run the virtual machine and only have a smooth Windows task bar at the bottom of the screen.

[mpack]

But for the lack of a caption bar, that looks like scale mode, not seamless mode. Or, the smoothing artifacts I see could just be caused by JPEG compression (I note that the host taskbar is fuzzy too). It would be better to have a PNG version of this screenshot (use the host Snipping Tool that I see on the taskbar).

[wxl]

Exactly. It looks like scaled mode. At full screen. But it's not.

Another way to look at it is that it's seamless mode but where the guest desktop still shows.

Here's me running through the various view modes.

vbox views w10 guest

vbox views w10 guest.gif (103.13 KiB) Viewed 30261 times

As you can see, not only does the desktop disappear, but so do the windows with it. However, interestingly, the VirtualBox still seems to respond to its hotkeys and in fact, you'll notice that the properties of the selected entry in Explorer is shown the second time I come out of seamless. I did this using Alt-Enter while the guest was, by all visual appearances, inactive.

EDIT: As you can see in the next message, I figured out the problem with the desktop disappearing, but still, the problem is not fixed:

revised view modes w10 guest

view modes w10 guest.gif (116.33 KiB) Viewed 30257 times

[wxl]

Oh, I figured out why my entire virtual machine disappears. Apparently if the virtual machine is set to auto resize the guest display and the host is running at 800x600 or less, then it fails.

Even with that solved, though, there's still the problem of the OP: the guest desktop does not disappear in seamless.

Additionally, there's the issue of the taskbar disappearing when you try to hit start, though other menus and context menus don't seem to be misbehaving:

w10 start hides menu bar in seamless

w10 start hies menubar in seamless.gif (79.29 KiB) Viewed 30258 times

[mpack]

I hope those poor quality gifs wasn't intended to substitute for the png I asked for.

[wxl]

@mpack, you asked someone else for a PNG. I was providing additional information. Still:

w10 seamless sucks

w10 seamless sucks scaled.png (126.32 KiB) Viewed 30238 times

Excuse the small size, but attachments are limited to 128k. Here is the full size.

[codelogicws]

I also have this problem describe in the original report using several versions of VirtualBox including the Oracle supported (VirtualBox Version 5.1.0). Does anyone have a solution for this issue? Is there anyone else with Ubuntu who has seamless Windows 10 running correctly.

Host OS: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
uname -a: Linux spider 4.4.0-31-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 13 00:07:12 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Guest OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.40GHz × 8
Graphics: GeForce GTX 860M/PCIe/SSE2
Memory: 15.6 GiB

[skidvd]

I'm experiencing the exact same issue as originally posted with VB 5.026 r108824 and win 10 (64 bit).

[wxl]

To be clear, though there are other issues described in this bug and on the forum, the primary bug is that in seamless mode, the guest desktop does not disappear. In other words, it's not as seamless as before. The guest windows do not appear to share the same environment as the host desktop, but continue to appear to be restrained to the guest desktop, which is clearly separate from the host desktop. The guest desktop does appear "full screen" in the sense that it lacks the menu bar or window decorations, but is not like putting an app like your browser in full screen where it covers the entirety of the screen. It is drawn within the bounds of available desktop space, not including the panel. This is expected behavior for seamless mode. What's not expected is the guest desktop appearing.

Also, I can confirm the issue persists with VirtualBox 5.026 r108824 running on an Ubuntu 64 bit 14.04 host with a 4.4.0.28.30 kernel (I've got .31.33 but haven't rebooted) and Windows 64 bit 10.0.10586 (you can get that by running ver, winver, systeminfo, or simply opening the command prompt).

I'm reiterating what I already posted on the bug report but since neither is getting much activity, I thought it might be best to put it both places.