Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Postings relating to old VirtualBox pre-releases
Post Reply
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

Host: Windows 7 pro 64 bit
Guest Windows 7 home 64 bit

Nice try on getting Aero to work, but running in fullscreen mode causes serious problems.

Try right click a program, run as admin. UAC prompt causes guest to lock and even has impact on the host.
Also, the Virtualbox menu bar disappears and 'CTRL-DEL' stops working.
Ctrl-ALT-DEL (followed by cancel) can often bring back the guest window, but not fully functional.

A wild guess: Can it be because both host and guest write directly to the same graphics card, both assuming they have exclusive control over it?
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

Does this only happen to me or can someone confirm?

Simply run fullscreen and trigger the Windows UAC prompt, for instance 'Run as admin' (using the default setting for UAC). You can just cancel the prompt, if you like.
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
bedrock
Posts: 10
Joined: 16. Feb 2010, 12:04
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 11.04, webOS SDK 3.0.2, Windows 8 Developer Preview

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by bedrock »

I have a similar experience. But switching out of full screen using Host + F enabled me to see the UAC prompt and click either Yes / No and continue using the guest without problems, also it had no effect on the host for me.

It was suggested to me previously in the beta threads to configure my guest to not switch to the secure desktop for UAC prompts, this can indeed be used as a work around for this problem.
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

You're right, that running in a window works, this is a fullscreen issue.

However, changing the UAC to not use the secure desktop (but still prompt) didn't help me - still locking up the guest.

And further, the virtualbox menu line at top/bottom does not show at all. This obviously makes it worse, now I can only control the guest from host (basically kill it).
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

Think I have found the bug. Apparently (at least in fullscreen) you're creating a window ON TOP of the normal desktop for the Aero.
Now the Virtualbox menu and the secure prompt will be hidden behind this window, causing troubles.
The reason I assume this, is that Aero crashed. By 'CTRL-ALT-DEL' the host and cancel I got a window back in the guest. But this was the Windows screen with 'Welcome', the one that comes right before screen switches to the desktop. That window was still intact happily UNDER the desktop.
I have not studied Windows Aero, but I don't the extra window on top is how it's supposed to be and will give troubles.
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
misha
Posts: 289
Joined: 19. Dec 2008, 11:10

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by misha »

Yes, we here some people complaining about a full-screen issue. The problem is that we can not reproduce it here so far. We'll try to reproduce it here again and if we can not, we'll look into some other ways of finding the issue, e.g. passing you an instrumented build with verbose logging.
misha
Posts: 289
Joined: 19. Dec 2008, 11:10

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by misha »

To get started, could you attach a log for you VM session, where this issue occurs to you?
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

Actually I had given up and reverted to the old 3D, but I think this is an important issue, so I have made a clean install of W7 (I actually had serious problems uninstalling the old guestadditions).

I installed guestadditons with new 3D support, no problem.
Now switching to Aero: Black screen. Doing my host 'Ctrl-Alt-Del, cancel' thing I got the classic desktop back (the personal settings had changed).
DWM had crashed twice.
Rebooting, Aero came up.
...but basically the same issues in fullscreen: No VirtualBox menu bar, UAC prompt still not visible (with secure desktop).
I can set a 3D screensaver, but the screen flickers twice, whenever I change it.
The same with games: Twice flicker starting and stopping, works ok in between.

Whenever I go from windowed mode to fullscreen, I first see a black screen WITH the VBox menu bar. then it changes to Aero WITHOUT the menu bar.

I'm more and more convinced that this is a matter of z-order for the Aero desktop. It stays in front of everything, which it shouldn't. Obviously the secure desktop and Vbox menu bar should be in front of the Aero dektop, not behind it!!!

I have attached the system errors from the guest (it's danish, but you can guess the meaning, 'Forskydning for fejl' means: 'Offset for error', probably the most interesting for you).
I have also attached VBox logs and service logs.
Attachments
Aero errors.zip
(68.94 KiB) Downloaded 22 times
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

Ok, now I was running in a window and dwm just crashed twice. I wasn't running any programs, just an empty desktop. It happened, when I switched focus from host to guest (the screen flickered and then dwm crash and switch to basic desktop).

I have backed up the clean install (without guestadditions), so I could try a debug build of guest additions.
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
poulbak
Posts: 33
Joined: 9. Feb 2010, 22:52
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly Windows 7

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by poulbak »

Ok, I don't know how your driver works, but there's a difference in the window layout when I check host and guest:
Notice 'WorkerW'


Host.png
Host.png (28.97 KiB) Viewed 4075 times
Guest.png
Guest.png (52.6 KiB) Viewed 4075 times
Poul Bak
------------------------------------------------------
2011: The year of hardware acceleration
misha
Posts: 289
Joined: 19. Dec 2008, 11:10

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by misha »

Re Z-order issue with fullscreen & Aero enabled: this issue is caused by ATI drivers bug.
To make a proper work-around, I need to ensure your behavior is similar to what I'm seeing here:
Does the issue goes away when VM window becomes inactive? E.g. while having VM window active & displayed, press <ctrl>+<alt>+<del> (which should be propagated to host, and not propagated to guest), and select "Start Task Manager" in a host popup window.
This should start task manager, make its window active, and VM window inactive.
Is it correct that the issue goes away until VM window becomes active again?
misha
Posts: 289
Joined: 19. Dec 2008, 11:10

Re: Aero and fullscreen (in guest) is really bad

Post by misha »

Re Z-order issue with fullscreen & Aero enabled: The following test build should solve the problem:
http://www.virtualbox.org/download/test ... tiArch.exe
There is no need to update guest additions, i.e. only host VBox installations needs to be updated.
Please give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Post Reply