virtualbox.org

I have upgraded to the latest VirtualBox 3.2.0, and now I experience problems with a Windows XP guest on a Windows 7 host: When the guest is running in seamless mode it suddenly stops responding, and I have to shut it down from the host and restart the guest. This hasn't happened on previous releases before VB 3.2.0. Does anybody else experience the same thing?

My guest configuration is like this:

System
Base Memory: 1024 MB
Processor(s): 1
Boot Order: Floppy, CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled
Nested Paging: Enabled

Display
Video Memory: 16 MB
3D Acceleration: Disabled
2D Video Acceleration: Disabled
Remote Display Server: Disabled

Seamless mode broke for me as well in VB 3.2.0, it was fine in prior versions running with same setup.

If I go seamless and move guest windows around, the window that I'm moving will leave artifacts. Even the Start menu will leave artifacts.
If I use the shortcut keys to exit Seamless mode, the guest OS is aborted without warning...it just dies on the spot. (same happens if I go fullscreen mode)

Host system:
Windows Server 2003 R2 w/ SP2
Intel Core 2 E8400 @ 3.00GHz
4 GB of RAM
on board intel graphics chip (Q35 I believe)

Guest system:
Windows XP SP3
Base memory: 375MB (I've also tried 512)
Enable IO APIC: Enabled
Processor: 1
Enable PAE/NX: Enabled
Video Memory: 18MB (I've also tried up to 50)
Monitor Count: 1
3D Acceleration: not enabled, nor is it installed on guest.
No Audio or shared folders.
Hard Drive is only bootable item selected, and it's a vmdk (an old vmware image) file setup on a SATA Controller.

This has worked since as far back as I can remember.

By default I run at 1600x1200 resolution. I've tried going to 1280x1024, but I still get artifacts when I move a window around (explorer, for example).

I've tried:
- reinstalling the guest additions.
- "repair"ing the host installation of 3.2.0.
- turning off "write combining" under display options.
- making sure both host and guest are on the same "Color quality" in display options (currently set at 32-bit).

I did notice, upon switching out of Seamless Mode, that if I don't do anything (not even move the mouse), the guest will most-of-the-time reappear in a windowed state. Which if I recall from my Windows 7 host machine, is an oddity of windows 7....ie, if a window is "locked" due to extended processing or something, and I try to interact with it, windows 7 will kill the process. I can duplicate that when playing WoW, if I click on the loading screen a couple times while zoning from one place to another.

Not sure if that's related to either my win 2003 host or chr.jorgensen's win 7 host...either way, it's not normal and didn't do this in the prior versions....nor do I remember the flickering/artifacting when in Seamless Mode.

Going from Seamless (or FullScreen) to windowed and back appears to be fixed in 3.2.2.

However, moving guest windows around, while in Seamless mode, still produces annoying screen flickering for anything that is displayed from the guest OS. The flickering is not present while in windowed or FullScreen mode.

And I doubt this matters, but just to simplify things, I even made the host background and the guest background a plain black color...ie, no wallpaper on either.

Still definitely a problem with seamless on a secondary monitor in 3.2.6. Despite trying all combinations of 3D/2D support, I haven't been able to get seamless working with a secondary monitor in any of the 3.2.x line, though it worked great in 3.1.6.

If I disable the second monitor then seamless is fine though.