Mouse not captured by Windows 7 guest with VB 6.1.0, 6.0.14 or 5.2.10 on macOS Sierra host

[DamienDeville]

After migrating from guest Windows 7 to 10 with VB 6.0.14 on host macOS Sierra (which was working fine with guest Windows 7), the full-screen option host F would not work even after installing the guest addition on Windows 10.

So I reverted back to Windows 7 and the full-screen was no longer working. I tried to uninstall and reinstall the guest addition and it destroyed the mouse integration which is now disabled after starting the VM even though it is enabled on the setting menu.

Now I can't figure out how to install the guest additions without a working mouse as the it involves clicking on Windows buttons inaccessible from the arrow keys of the mac keyboards which just do not move the cursor from one button to the next. The mouse of the host does not merge with the mouse of the guest. So now I am stuck with a completely unusable VM. I tried to upgrade to VB 6.1.0 and downgrade to 5.2.10 from a backup but still no mouse integration with either of those.

I tried to change the pointing device from USB tablet to PS/2 Mouse, the graphic controller to VBoxVGA, VBoxSVGA and even VMSVGA, the USB controller to 3, 2 and 1, disable my filters, enable and disable 3D and 2D acceleration, but none of these attempts make neither the mouse integration nor the full screen option work.

Any suggestion?

[scottgus1]

After migrating from guest Windows 7 to 10...So I reverted back to Windows 7

These changes are major operating system changes, with great possibility of a bit-flip messing things up, especially as this computer is not likely a server-class computer with ECC memory and enterprise hard drives. You may have to restore using the backup of this important guest that you took before making such major changes.

Of course, I'm speaking facetiously. Why on earth would I be so sarcastic?! True. But that's where computers take us sometimes. Computers do sometimes fail. Then again:

I tried to upgrade to VB 6.1.0 and downgrade to 5.2.10 from a backup

Does this guest have a backup? If so, restore it.

Prepare for the possibility that you will need to reinstall Windows 7 or a fresh Windows 10 using the Windows 7 license key in a new guest, then transfer your data. Aside from the dual operating system change, these:

I tried to change the pointing device from USB tablet to PS/2 Mouse, the graphic controller to VBoxVGA, VBoxSVGA and even VMSVGA, the USB controller to 3, 2 and 1, disable my filters, enable and disable 3D and 2D acceleration

will possibly have confused the guest OS even more.

Let's see what the status of this guest is. Start the guest from cold-boot not save-stated.

(If it is save-stated now, start it, hold down the Mac equivalent of the Windows Flag key and hit R, to bring up the Run... box in the guest. Enter this command:

shutdown -s -t 2

Let the guest shut down then start it again from cold boot.)

Mouse over the guest window's status bar at the bottom. There will be a little mouse icon. Mouse over that. The popup will explain the different possible icon states for mouse integration (MI) and what each means. If you right-click (can a Mac right-click now?) the mouse icon a popup menu will appear allowing to turn off/on MI. If MI is on, the popup menu will show a checkmark box, and the mouse status icon will have a green arrow in it. If MI is off but can be turned on, the arrow will be orange. You can also go to the guest's Input menu, there is a choice to turn MI on/off.

If you can get MI on, then you're good. If you can't toggle it on, or the mouse still won't respond in the guest OS despite having MI switched on, Use the 'shutdown' command above to turn off the guest. Zip and post this guest's 'vbox.log' using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.

FWIW 'Tab' moves the focus around the buttons in Windows. Arrow keys might work, but Tab is supposed to always work.

[mpack]

I had similar struggles with a Win7 VM on a Win10 host. The VM had lain dormant for a long time, and although I updated Win7 itself plus the GAs, mouse integration didn't seem to be working. Also, all of the VM menu options related to mouse integration were grayed out.

Eventually I worked around it by changing the pointing device type in the VM settings, from "PS/2 Mouse" to "USB Tablet".

[DamienDeville]

FWIW 'Tab' moves the focus around the buttons in Windows. Arrow keys might work, but Tab is supposed to always work.

Tab alone was not working, but a combination of Tab and Alt-Tab to switch among superimposed windows and dialog boxes did work.

Once I could install the guest extension, the mouse was captured with:
- USB Tablet as pointing device;
- USB 3 controller as USB Port;
- VBoxGraphics controller as Graphics controller.

Then I needed to change the scale factor to 200% to account for the resolution mismatch between macOS and Windows.

Then to be allowed to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 I needed to uninstall the virtualbox graphic card driver WDDM part of the guest extension.

After the migration, the mouse was still working, but the screen was too small.
After unsintalling and reinstalling the guest extension I managed to get Windows 10 with an integrated mouse and a full screen. \o/

I get a lot of video jitter, but it improves to manageable level once I disabled 3D acceleration. So I guess I will use Blender on macOS not on Windows 10.