Win XP guest keyboard problems

[memilanuk]

Hello,

I have Virtualbox 3.1.8 running on an older MacBook (latest Snow Leopard 10.6.x updates, though), with Windows XP SP3 installed on it so I can run some legacy programs. I'm honestly not sure if the problem is a Virtualbox in OS X issue, an XP in Virtualbox issue, or just a plain Win XP problem.

Everything else seems to be working okay, and I did a bit of data entry last night with no issues, but somewhere along the line I must have twiddled a bit somehow, and now when I try typing regular text I start getting all sorts of unexpected results. As an example, pressing 'e' opens a File Explorer window; pressing 'u' opens up the screen reader window and starts it... stuff that I would normally never turn on intentionally.

If anyone can help me with this so I can get back to being able to do useful things in WinXP inside Virtualbox, I'd appreciate it.

TIA,

Monte

[HipHoppity]

Hi Memilanuk,

Check out this post (particularly michael-a's comments) => http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=30872

It looks like you've got a WIN key stuck on in your WinXP Guest. Try pressing this key again to turn it off. On my iMac extended keyboard this is the right-hand-side command/Apple key.

[memilanuk]

Thanks for the help... but it turns out it was something even simpler. I tried tracking back, thinking about what all I'd done in the midst of setting up a new install, etc. I had installed a bunch of Powertoys, and I think one of them was a screen or toolbar magnifier - which apparently started grabbing certain keystrokes. There might have been a Win key stuck on, but the simplest option since I didn't really need those particular Power Toys, was to simply uninstall and reboot. Everything is working just ducky now

Thanks,

Monte