Hide X

[Russw]

In the guest window (windows XP guest on a windows 11 host), is there a way to hide the X in the upper right, the one that closes the VM? I've got someone who keeps accidentally clicking that one and crashing out of the VM instead of clicking the X just below that to close a program running in the guest. I see settings for almost everything else in the VM User Interface settings.

[scottgus1]

I can't find anything that expressly removes the VM window Close X icon. That's a Windows thing, not a Virtualbox thing.

There could be a useful setting under https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09. ... -vm-action
9.17.8. Action when Terminating the VM
9.17.9. Default Action when Terminating the VM

FWIW there is a popup box that's supposed to come up when clicking the VM Window Close X:

default close box.png (11.58 KiB) Viewed 1289 times

This box pauses the VM while it is showing, and then takes the chosen action when OK is clicked. It can be backed out of by clicking Cancel or the popup box's Close X.

Is this box not showing? If it is not, then someone has been footling around with the defaults. Find said person, administer required dope slap. Then post back and we'll find out how to get the box showing again.

If the box is showing, then the person killing the VM is not paying attention to the box and is just blindly clicking. Administer the required dope slap to the VM user, inform them that this box actually means something, they have to pay attention to it carefully, and tell them they're going on a PIP if they kill the VM again.

Another alternative: Since the XP VM has no 3D acceleration, you might try starting the VM headless, then remoting into the VM, either through Virtualbox's VRDP server, or through XP's MSRDP. The VM will not be killed when the RDP window is closed.

[Russw]

Yes, that window pops up, but this person isn't exactly a computer genius, if you know what I mean, they just click OK and power down the VM because I'm not there for them to ask me. Dope slapping has not achieved the desired level of attention, lol, the issue keeps happening.

[scottgus1]

Hmm. Some dope just can't be slapped away nowadays.

Barring some useful tweak in the vboxmanage commands, I'd go for the RDP alternative, then.

[Russw]

OK, I'll give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion.