Enabling desktop effects VBox 3.1

[KirkD]

I'm sure this has been asked and potentially solved, but I couldn't seem to find a thread that actually discussed the solution.

I'm running VirtualBox on a Centos 5.4.3 x86_64 host with a Fedora 12 i386 guest and want to enable desktop effects. I have 3D acceleration enabled in the setup along with the maximum memory (128 MB). When I try to enable compositing within the Fedora guest it gets turned off automatically and reset back. I notice also that the display is quite choppy when I move windows around in general. I assume I need to enhance the video driver, but I'm not clear on how to do this. I also see that there is no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11 - what??

Any help is truly appreciated.

-Kirk

[Sasquatch]

If there is no xorg.conf, then you don't have the Guest Additions installed, or at least the driver is not in use. See my howto to fix it.

[KirkD]

Thanks for the response. Actually, I had installed Guest Additions, but I followed your guide as you described and copied the example xorg.conf file. I still get the same failure for compositing, desktop effects, and general window movement is still very choppy.

[Sasquatch]

Can you post the VM settings (VBoxManage showvminfo <"vmname">) and your system specs. I know that the new Fedora isn't that great in a VM (maybe it sucks on bare metal too). There have been some complaints/questions already here.