Hi mnz2000,
Thank you for your reply. I learned a thing or two from that solution of yours
For some reason I do not know, I was not able to logon to this forum for the past days to give you a feedback on your suggestions.
Regarding my 2nd concern of locating VMs on a different folder assigned by the user, we dont need to touch the XML files anymore. I found out that this can be easily done by modifying the Preference settings in the VirtualBox GUI menu.
As for the DCOMCNFG option, I have been experimenting different combinations and the following are the results I got:
1) When following your suggestion of setting the Identity to "This user", we get to see the actual status of the VM and a display preview of the running VM on the GUI! This is something that everybody was asking for in thi forum before.
2) In this setting, you can Reset, Savestate or Shutdown a VM from the GUI; basic management functions that I do on VMs from time to time.
3) However, in this setting, you cannot open a VM on a window like we normally do. You have to uninstall the VboxVmService, set the DCOMCNFG back to the Identity setting of "The Launching user" and re-launch Virtualbox to do so.
4) I usually open a VM to install new or upgrade applications, that is why I was looking for this feature in VBox 4.2 & VBoxVmService v3.1. This I can do in VBox v4.1.x and Reindeer. I can issue a shutdown VM on the command prompt and open the VBox GUI and open the VM I just shutdown on the GUI.
5) To be able to launch VBox while VBoxVmService is running (or actually, installed), I will have to change the DCOMCNFG - Identity setting back to "This user".
If somebody has a much simpler or straightforward solution to this, I'd appreciate the feedback. I can live with this setup for now. On a day to day basis, we just need to be able to know the status of a particular VM and do a reset when it hangs.