virtualbox.org

Running:
- Linux: Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 Host (64-bit)
- VirtualBox 2.2.4
- Windows Vista guest (32-bit), Guest Additions installed and working

Symptoms:
After "some" idle time (30 min or so), the keyboard freezes inside the VM. The mouse can still be used.
If I run Vista in a window, then I can minimize the VM-window, then restore the VM-window and clicking in the VM I can now again use the keyboard (= workaround).
However, when I run Vista in full-screen mode and my keyboard gets frozen after some idle time, then I can not switch to Linux and try the previous workaround. The only way out is to use the mouse and click the menus to shutdown the Vista-VM. This is not a real workaround if you're editing a document!

This effectively makes my Vista-VM unworkable/unreliable in full-screen mode. My family needs to run in full-screen, else they are confused. For me this is a showstopper to move my Vista (and other Windows-) PCs to VMs.

I have searched extensively through the forums and bug-reports and found no solution or workaround for the full-screen situation.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Not sure if this will help but, most of the time I see this problem is due to the keyboard being plugged into a USB port. I had the exact same problem until I moved the keyboard to a ps2 port instead.

Perryg, thanks for your suggestion.
However I do have a PS2 mouse on the system.

OK so where is the keyboard plugged in? USB, or ps2?

Plugged into PS2

Do you have a screen saver running on the guest? This has been a problem in the past and doubt if it has been fixed. If so try turning off the screen saver in the guest and see if it helps.

That is one of the suggestions I tried when reading through forums and bug lists. So:
- screensaver is disabled in guest and in host
- display power saving options are disabled in the guest

I'm having the same issue with Vista 64 guest freezing after a while.
I'm running Debian testing/64-bit host on an ASUS G50Vt-X1 laptop.

The VM is accessing the raw partition of my disk where Vista Home Premium 64 was installed by Asus.
Everything worked out of the box except I had to move the VM disk to SATA port 0 due to Vista's IDE driver being disabled.

VT is enabled.