virtualbox.org

Apologies if this has been addressed before, but I've searched and haven't found anything. My WinXP32 guest always starts with desktop icons strewn all over the place in no particular place. I'm running a Vista64 host. I've tried locking the desktop icons, and it seems to make no difference. Any suggestions? Best regards.

PS: It's a minor problem, and I certainly can live with it... I just wonder if it's something simple I'm overlooking. Otherwise, it's working very nicely!

Do you use Host+F fullscreen mode, have you enabled Host+G 'Auto-resize Guest Display', and if you were to boot with Host+F fullscreen turned OFF what is the guest display size?

My guess: Your guest Control Panel display size (as stored in the registry) is something small like 640x480. When the guest boots, it realises the small size, and moves your icons all over the place so they can be seen. Then VirtualBox Guest Additions starts, resizes the window to full screen and you're left wondering why the icons are in strange positions. You re-position them, but the same happens again the next boot and they go all over the place again.

To fix: Disable Fullscreen mode, change the guest Display Properties to 640x480, then to whatever the actual size of the window is (likely=full display resolution)(you need two changes to make sure it sticks), then re-enable Host+F Fullscreen and restart the VM to see if that fixes it...

You were absolutely right!

Thank you!