Easy "Spaces" Switching in Fullscreen Mode

[HipHoppity]

I noticed this topic came up in the "Suggestions" section. I recently started using VBox (version 2.2.2) after experience with Parallels v. 3.0 and v. 4.0. Like others here, I run in Fullscreen Mode with a WinXP guest in its own Space. I like to easily switch back and forth with ctrl-arrow. You can do this if you do the following:

1. Shutdown your VM.
2. In the "VirtualBox" menu go to "Preferences . . .".
3. In the Preferences window, select "Input".
4. In the Input menu unselect the "Auto Capture Keyboard" checkbox.
5. Restart your VM and fast Space switching works similar to Parallels -- use your shortcut (ctrl-arrow, etc.) without first using host key (e.g. left-?).

I hope this helps those that like to quickly switch among Spaces. Now on to unusual behavior with a numeric keypad. . .

I have an iMac with an Apple wireless extended Mac keyboard (i.e. numeric keypad included) and I do a lot of number entry in my work. With this keyboard the "numlock" is the key combination "shift-clear". When switching Spaces from Mac use (I'll call it a "Mac Space" from here on) back to my VBox guest WinXP ("Guest Space" from now on) the numlock is off. To turn the numlock back on I have to do the "shift-lock" twice to resume use of the numeric keypad in the Guest Space. Now here is a strange thing I noticed, if you switch Spaces 2x using the configuration outlined above the numlock comes back on without activating it.

Since this numlock behavior might be a bit hard to follow from the above, you can see it in action for yourself with the following experiment:

A. Set up your VM for fast Spaces switching as outlined above and start your VBox VM in Fullscreen Mode (Guest Space).
B. In your VM Guest Space (WinXP in my case) start Notepad and numlock (shift-clear) the numeric keypad.
C. Type "4444" in Notepad using the numeric keypad.
D. Switch (crtl-arrow) back to a Mac Space.
E. Switch back to the Guest Space and hit "4" on your numeric keypad. Since numlock is off it now acts as an arrow key and you should see the cursor go back one space.
F. Switch back to a Mac Space and then again switch back to the Guest Space.
G. Now type "6" in Notepad. Notice the numlock is now activated without pressing shift-clear. You should end up with 44464 in your Notepad window.

Pretty weird! This just demonstrates this problem of the numlock reactivating on every-other Space switch from Mac Space to Guest Space. Seems like this might well be a Virtualbox bug -- any thoughts? Does anyone know of a work-around to keep a numeric keypad enabled during Space switching?

[phreakshew]

hey THANX for posting this -

This is my 1st experience with VMs and I gotta tell ya, it's freaking Awesome!

I'm running an Intel Macbook, 2.0Ghz, 4GB RAM, and recently installed XP Pro in a separate partition via Boot Camp because I needed a stupid Windows device to run a school related program. Now I also have Kubuntu installed via VirtualBox (just because I can) and I'm having waaay too much fun with it. I've allocated 512MB RAM to the VM, and it runs Compiz pretty slick. I'm still playing around with the video memory settings, but don't notice a difference past 16MB so far.

[log111]

Wow, this is just what I need! Thanks for sharing the tip!