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I don't want a keyboard

Posted: 13. Oct 2023, 21:12
by sysopch
Hi all,
I am new to the forum.
I need to simulate a device which has a touch screen but no keyboard, sort of a kiosk.

The guest OS is Windows 10 IoT and I want the system to automatically open the virtual keyboard whenever the user accesses an input field. The OS+application image loaded on the target device exhibits this behavior. The VM with the same image (.win image flashed with WinPE, for what matters) does not open the virtual keyboard.

I thought I just had to disable the embedded PS/2 keyboard in VirtualBox... but I could not find a way to do this.

I am sure I am not the first one to try such a thing, but I was not able to find anything in the forums, I only find posts about screen+keyboard capuring, which is not what I need.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

Aldo

Re: I don't want a keyboard

Posted: 13. Oct 2023, 23:12
by scottgus1
There appears to be no control over the virtual keyboard presented in either the main Virtualbox window or Vboxmanage commands. It does not appear that there is any way to get rid of it.

You can search the manual PDF https://download.virtualbox.org/virtual ... Manual.pdf for "keyboard" to see if anything pertinent shows up.

Re: I don't want a keyboard

Posted: 14. Oct 2023, 03:22
by fth0
It's apparently not documented in the VirtualBox 7.0 User Manual, but you can use VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --keyboard none to not provide a keyboard to the VM.

Re: I don't want a keyboard

Posted: 15. Oct 2023, 17:56
by scottgus1
Ha! Thanks, fth0, I did not know about that!

Re: I don't want a keyboard

Posted: 16. Oct 2023, 09:59
by sysopch
Thanks for the replies
fth0 wrote: 14. Oct 2023, 03:22 It's apparently not documented in the VirtualBox 7.0 User Manual, but you can use VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --keyboard none to not provide a keyboard to the VM.
This partially worked: I get no keystrokes from the standard keyboard and I get them if I connect a USB one.
However it did not trigger the opening of the virtual keyboard. Also, in device manager, I keep seeing the PS/2 keyboard and the device is reported as working. So I guess the keyboard is still emulated and "present" in the system, even if it is not able to generate keyboard input