virtualbox.org

I just installed virtualbox for the first time. I'm running Ubuntu Linux and absolutely needed a windows app, but couldn't get Wine to work with sound, so I resorted to virtualbox.

So far I love it, but I have one very annoying problem. Once the VM takes hold of my mouse I can't get it back. I'm a newbie to this program, so maybe I don't know what I'm doing, but I thought I should be able to hit the host key, which is the right-ctrl key by default, and then I could get my mouse back to the root/host linux GUI. This is not working, nothing seems to work except if I'm not in full-screen mode I can hit the PRINT SCREEN key to bring up a GNOME print screen utility that returns mouse control to my host OS, but this is annoying, and I would prefer to be able to use it in full-screen mode, but once I enter full screen I have to reboot to exit it.

My guess is that Ubuntu/Gnome are not working well with sharing the keyboard with VirtualBox and that this is a common problem for anyone trying to do this.

BTW: I'm on Ubuntu 8.04 x64 release with current updates.

TIA

yes, obviously I have tried RIGHTCTRL+F to exit fullscreen mode instead of rebooting, but this doesn't work... basically, my "host key" doesn't seem to be working under Ubuntu.

Nevermind, once I installed Windows XP as a VM, I went to that guest host and installed the GUEST ADDITIONS and rebooted, then everything works great after doing that. Keyboard and mouse integration is pretty good now, even full screens correctly. Although, occassionally it drops my keyboard support, not sure why, but much happier with it after installing guest additions inside the guest os. thanks

Does anyone else have keyboard dropping out? I can't get past the Windows XP installer first screen because keyboard -> VirtualBox -//-> does not pass Enter, R or F3 to Win XP app. Are we both using notebooks, here?

I have VB running on both my Laptop and PC, no problems with the keyboard. Be sure that the VM did grab the keyboard. You can see that if the Host Key indicator is green. If you want to be sure, open a different window on the Host, then click inside the VM window so it will grab both keyboard and mouse. You might want to upgrade to 1.6.6, released today.