virtualbox.org

Hi all, I am new to this forum and I would like to answer a question.

Is there any way to enable 3d acceleration on Windows 2000\XP? I have set up a Win 2000 SP4 guest. In the Display tab of the Settings window, I cannot allocate 256 mb of video memory unless I select Win Vista\7. Obviously, I installed Guest Additions on my guest system in safe mode, though it claims 256 mb is needed to enable 3d acceleration, so I could not enable 3d acceleration since I only have 128 mb available on Win2000\XP.

I also checked the VirtualBox user manual, and it mentions that 3d acceleration support is available starting with Windows 2000.

My host is Pentium Dual core E5400 2.70ghz, 3gb system ram, Windows 10 version 1909, Geforce 9400 GT,
VirtualBox version is latest 6.1.34, VM is Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 installed, 256mb ram, 128mb video memory.

PS I really apologize if there are already any duplicate posts in this forum, so tell me in this case. Also sorry for my poor English grammar.

In practice, the only way to get accelerated graphics in Vista and earlier is to install VirtualBox 6.0.x and select the VBoxVGA graphics controller in the VM.

In VirtualBox 6.1.x, 3D acceleration requires use of the VBoxSVGA or VMSVGA graphics controllers, and the devs have no provided GA drivers for these for older Windows versions.

If you could possibly replace the VM with Win7-32bit then all of these restrictions are gone. Perhaps you could outline why you believe you need Win2K or XP.

For Vista the VirtualBox 6.1.0 (yes, .0) guest additions include a Vista-compatible driver for the newer VBoxSVGA that is signed in a way that even Vista 64-bits will still recognize and load it, meaning you get 3D acceleration even on 6.1.34.

This is not applicable to XP or lower. As far as I can see, 3D acceleration is effectively no longer supported for these.

Before this discussion gets confused, please note that the OP made no mention of caring about Vista. It was me who mentioned it, because that's where the VirtualBox cutoff is.

Hence, any discussion of Vista GA signing issues in this topic will be deleted.