Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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BavariaR
Posts: 12
Joined: 8. Jun 2018, 12:55

Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by BavariaR »

I am a novice in the Virtual Box world but I managed in 2 weeks time to get going and have my full Working environment running in Virtual Box on my private laptop.
Besides some other "issues" that I did not yet find a solution for the one which hinders me most is the fact that I am not able to run PowerPoint properly in Presentation mode.

In full screen on single monitor it is working just ok, sometimes the slide is not showing correctly, parts are missing etc in Window mode on the guest it is even worth, main screen can become black or presentation slide "escaping" outside of screen size etc.

But what does not work at all is when you have 2 screens active and configured as extended desktop to run the presentation in "presenters mode" where on one screen you have the full screen slide for the audience and on the other screen you have presenters view with the notes etc...

PowerPoint simply does not recognize the 2 screens / virtual monitors / windows as 2 proper monitors in order to have the vies setup correctly, VirtualMachine Guest always tries to run power point in full screen on both virtual monitors with glitches and artefacts... totally not usable!

Anybody having a hint for me

Both Host and Guest Windows 10 Pro, Guest and Host additions loaded VB 5.2.12... otherwise I am pretty impressed which the stability the speed and ease of use
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by mpack »

Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.
BavariaR
Posts: 12
Joined: 8. Jun 2018, 12:55

Re: Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by BavariaR »

Here you go with the log
Attachments
PC Master-2018-06-11-18-20-43.zip
(53.7 KiB) Downloaded 23 times
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by mpack »

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the actual problem, but you seem to have assigned 100% of your physical cores to the VM (6 out of 6). Don't you think your host needs some too? And does the VM actually need that many cores? Asking a VM to manage cores it doesn't need can cripple performance. I would reduce this to two cores unless you know that the VM actually needs more.

Next, you seem to be suffering from a non fatal hardening problem :-
VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.617473 supR3HardenedErrorV: supR3HardenedMonitor_LdrLoadDll: rejecting 'C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdm.inf_amd64_0b61d575cd12b2ba\nvinitx.dll' (C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdm.inf_amd64_0b61d575cd12b2ba\nvinitx.dll): rcNt=0xc0000190
"nvinit.dll" will be an NVidia graphics DLL. It will be getting rejected because it is incorrectly signed. You might like to check for driver updates. Unfortunately this is a regular problem with NVidia drivers, which are excellent otherwise.

Another graphics oddity :-
VBox.log wrote: 00:00:03.138928 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VENDOR: Intel
00:00:03.138941 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_RENDERER: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630
Intel graphics drivers load, it's a pity that Intel 3D drivers have such a crap reputation. I take it that the motherboard chipset is Intel and you have an NVidia card in a slot.

I'm beginning to think that your problem is essentially: you have 3D graphics enabled in the VM settings, mismatched graphics cards, a problem with the drivers for one of the cards, compounded with perhaps your guest software isn't checking the capabilities of both cards (i.e. 3D and 2D/overlays on one and not the other).
BavariaR
Posts: 12
Joined: 8. Jun 2018, 12:55

Re: Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by BavariaR »

Thanks for the thorough analysis.

In fact I have an Dell XPS 15 with Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H Processor of 8. Generation, it has 6 Cores with 12 threads. In my VM setup I can vary the allocation of "cores" from 1 - 12 and the green part is ending at 6. My understanding is that I allocate half of the 6 threads to the VM and the other half would be remaining for the Host system. In fact when I run the VM I only use the VM and nothing else (basically my Work PC in virtualized mode), so it is OK to have maximum power to the VM

The Laptop has an UHD Intel Graphics card and on top an NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5
I updated the drivers of both cards only recently, but will repeat the procedure, should I update the drivers in Safe Mode?

On top of the problem with dual screen I also had problems of resizing Office application between a certain point where only blank strips appear when you size the window of Excel or Power point beyond that point otherwise the application is working well. I have now refrained from using 3D accleleration in the VM configuration and this at least solves the resizing issue... I will test the rest tomorrow and report.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by mpack »

BavariaR
Posts: 12
Joined: 8. Jun 2018, 12:55

Re: Using PowerPoint with presenters view on dual screen

Post by BavariaR »

Thanks for the tip will try to leave one CPU physically for the Host as of tomorrow.
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