virtualbox.org

Hello all!

Has anyone else noticed any strange behavior with regards to USB webcams? It seems that every time I'm starting a VM, VirtualBox is in some way accessing my webcam, as evidenced by my webcam's blue LED lighting up and staying lit for the whole VM session. And that occurs despite not having enabled the virtual USB controller in the VM's settings.

Currently, I'm running VirtualBox on a Windows 7 x64 Pro host. But I noticed the same behavior with some earlier VBox builds on a (then) Vista x64 Business host. I didn't bother filing it as a bug, because it is not consistently present in all VBox builds (e.g. not happening with 3.0.6 and 3.0.8 ), so I was led to believe it was found and fixed.

I'm asking for confirmation, since I should finally open a ticket in the bugtracker. Thanks in advance!

I do not have this problem. Linux host though so maybe it is a Windows sharing thing?
My camera does not start until I open a program that calls for it.

I was interested to see the new VT-x/AMD-v detection. I have Windows 7 64bit with VirtualXP and run a couple of VBox guests (Win 2000 & Win98 at the moment). I had found with 3.0.8 that, provided I started the VBox guest with hardware virtualisation disabled before starting VXP everything worked fine. Start VXP first, and it BSOD'd. Also, if I tried anything with hardware virtualisation enabled in the VBox guest I'd sufer another BSOD or serious crash. I've just updated to 3.0.10 and tested out the new detection, and intially it was pretty impressive. With VBox running my Win2K guest already with hardware virtualisation enabled, the moment I started VXP, VBox froze the Win2K guest, disabled hardware virtualisation and the vM was stopped dead. At the time I also had my Win98 guest running with virtualisation disabled and that was not affected. I was then able to restart Win2K with virtualisation disabled with no problems. Great I thought, but there's a catch. This is the only scenario I've found so far where it works. If I start VBox, then start VXP and then try to start a VBox VM, regardless of whether I have hardware virtualisation enabled or disabled I get the BSOD the instant it tries to initialise the VM (I have dump files for this one if they are of interest). As this happens before the guest begins to boot I don't think this is guest related at all. I also get a BSOD trying to start VBox after VXP. So, it seems the only time the detection works and the BSOD is avoided is if at least one virtual machine remains running throughout. If a VM is already running others will start, however if it has to initialise the first VM it falls over. As I've not delved into running VXP alongside VBox machines with 3.0.8 or earlier I can't comment on how they compare. This is not a huge problem for me as I rarely need to run VXP alongisde a VBox VM and can live without the ability to run them together, but I'm pretty sure someone will want to do this at some point in the future and it may become more relevant if future version of Windows Server begin to make use of similar virtual modes.

From the FAQ:

Another hint: after enabling VT-X/AMD-V in the BIOS you might need to switch the PC off completely, unplug it, or remove laptop battery for a minute. Ea:
Reboot the Host and go into the BIOS
disable vt-x, save BIOS settings, pause machine after bios boot messages
power down the Host (unplug power cord!)
start the Host and go into the BIOS
enable vt-x, save BIOS settings, pause machine after bios boot messages
power down the Host (unplug power cord!)
Boot the Host.

See also: http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/4593