5.1.8 - Any way to get back the old seamless behavior

[Bob1432]

At some point (I think it was the 5.1.8 upgrade) I lost the old seamless behavior and the windows guest desktop is no longer displayed. The problem with that is nothing windows writes to that area of the screen is displayed on the host system then either. So a context menu on the task bar would be cut off for instance because unless there's a window there on the guest system it does not show up on the host. My workaround at this point is to always have a full screen window open on the display with the task bar (something like explorer) so I can see things like context menus on the task bar or systray.

With the old behavior (showing the guest desktop) I didn't have this problem. Is there a way to toggle this? I want seamless but I also want to be able to see things like context menus on the guest that are not proper windows.

[socratis]

• What's your host version? Full and complete details please. "OSX" isn't enough, "OSX 10.9.5 build 13f1911" is much better.
• What's your guest version? Full and complete details please. "Win10" isn't enough, "Win10 1607, build 14393.969" is much better.
• What's your VirtualBox version? Full and complete details please. "The latest" is not enough, "VirtualBox 5.1.18 r140002" is much better.

For future reference, "current version", "latest version", "previous version" don't (generally speaking) provide accurate information. In a couple of months the "current" will definitely be different. It's better if you use the complete version numbers (including the build numbers) to identify software.

Now to the specifics. I'm not quite sure I follow what the problem is. Especially the phrase:

I want seamless but I also want to be able to see things like context menus on the guest that are not proper windows.

Could you "draw" the picture for me? Include a screenshot of an area of your desktop and use narrative (arrows, text overlays) to describe what the problem is. Please do not take a screen shot of your 4000x4000 desktop and point to a small area on the bottom right corner and say "That's the problem". Crop, focus, identify please.