Workaround for dynamic window resizing on W7RC host

[BajaPaul]

Just a W7RC FYI. I am running all 64-bit and Vbox 2.2.2. I have a Ubuntu 9.04 guest running on W7RC host. I noticed that my guest window was not resizing properly, in other words I had scroll bars across the right and bottom. The screen was readjusting about 95 percent and leaving about 5 percent "scrolled".
I discovered it is easy to correct this by jumping in and out of Seamless Mode (Host+L). Then everything works perfect until you restart the machine. Then you just have to do it again. I tried reinstalling Vbox but that did nothing for the resize problem.

Sometimes I also notice that I can barely glimpse what looks like the top edge of some menus and buttons behind the Machine-Device-Help bar. And sometimes these same menu items, Machine-Device-Help, have the popdown menu detached outside of the whole Vbox machine window when activated. I also noticed that the Vbox window wants to very aggressively grab the edges of my monitors (which is a new W7 feature). Also the Vbox window does not move around using the keyboard shortcuts such as Windows+Right or Windows+Shift+Left, etc.

Therefore, my experience suggests there are some slight incompatibilities with Virtualbox and W7RC. I tried to run VirtualBox.exe and VBoxSVC.exe in Vista SP1 compatibility mode but did not fix the incompatibilities for me. Has anyone else experienced anything similar W7? Other than these items everything works well.

My Ubuntu quest has been upgraded twice from 8.04 to the latest. I have 3D acceleration working great using 64MB video ram and am running Compiz. I have the 3D box and bouncy windows all working blazing fast. I run the Bridge Networking and the whole network is visible and accessible.

I installed my W7RC host on top of my Vista via upgrade versus a clean install. I had previously moved my Public folder (early 2007) to another drive and this created a host of problems including all my Public data getting wiped to a hidden file on the same drive as my Public folder. I thought it all got wiped for good! Anyway, I put my shadow copy of Vista back on and then moved my Public folder back to where Microsoft put it in the first place then tried the W7 upgrade again. It all went perfectly this time around.

Moral of the story, don’t move your Public folder. If you did, move it back before doing a W7 upgrade. Just create a new share on the other (big) drive and use it. I found out the hard way that the Public folder is not all yours. Microsoft has a bunch of files in hidden directories with all kinds of machine state stuff that they don’t want you messing with.

[shinji]

Actually this isn't a Win7 issue. I do this fine in a XP vm and I did it fine in a Ubuntu VM on Win7 RC Host. Make sure there are no defined resolutions in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. When there are the dynamic resizing gets disabled in the guest.

[BajaPaul]

That is good information to know. I did not notice my problem until after a giant Ubuntu update and thought that might have been the cause. Tonight I stepped back a few snapshots before the big update but still have the problem. From my perspective it seems to be a Vbox compatibility problem with W7RC.

Tell me, can you move the virtual machine window around using the shortcut keys? Like Windows+Left or Windows+Right or Windows+Up or Windows+Down? Those key combos should work as intended with other windows.

I been jacking around with some stuff so I may have messed something up in W7RC elsewhere that is affecting VirtualBox.

W7RC doesn't seem to like Ultramon too much.

PS: I uninstalled Ultramon and rebooted. Problem is stil there. Also meant to ask you how the menus are working? Are they detached like mine?

[Sasquatch]

Keep in mind that W7 is still a development OS and is therefor not supported by the mods/volunteers. There can still be last minute changes that will mess up every piece of support the devs might have put in VB.

As for the moving of windows, do you mean the whole VM GUI, or windows inside the Guest OS? If it's the former, make sure that the keyboard isn't grabbed.

And the changing of the resolution is described in my howto, check the Linux Guests forum for that. It's a GA feature, introduced in 2.1.4 IIRC.