Incorrect user profile when using "guestcontrol execute"

[Nox Metus]

Imagine we have a Windows guest. No matter under which host. A program, which we are going to launch on the guest by means of "VBoxManage guestcontrol execute", queries the application data folder. For example, like this:

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  WCHAR path[MAX_PATH];
  HRESULT hRes = SHGetFolderPathW(0, CSIDL_APPDATA, 0, 0, path);

  if SUCCEEDED(hRes) {
    std::wcout << path << std::endl;
  } else {
    std::cout << "SHGetFolderPathW returned error ";
    std::cout << "0x" << std::hex << std::fixed << std::setw(8) << std::setfill('0') << hRes << std::endl;
    std::cout << "APPDATA = " << getenv("APPDATA") << std::endl;
  }

The normal output of the code above (in Vista and Windows 7) would be:

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C:\Users\MeMyself\AppData\Roaming

But if we run this program (let's say its name is shgetfolder.exe) from the host, the code will fail:

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C:\> VBoxManage --nologo guestcontrol execute "My VM" "c:\path\shgetfolder.exe" --username "MeMyself" --password "SuperPuperSecret" --wait-for stdout
SHGetFolderPathW returned error 0x80070005
APPDATA = C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming

So as we can see, despite the program was ran under MeMyself user account, the environment for the process contains a wrong user profile path, which is in fact inaccessible to the user. This leads to errors in various applications. For example, svn command line client fails to start, saying “svn: Can't determine the user's config path”.

I suggest to consider this a bug.

[Sasquatch]

Is the actual user logged on, or is the Guest sitting at the Welcome screen with nobody logged on? If that's the case, it's not a bug, it's a user error. It only works for the user that is currently logged on. No user logged on means System is in control.

[Nox Metus]

Is the actual user logged on, or is the Guest sitting at the Welcome screen with nobody logged on? If that's the case, it's not a bug, it's a user error. It only works for the user that is currently logged on. No user logged on means System is in control.

In the example above the user MeMyself was logged in to the guest before the command

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VBoxManage --nologo guestcontrol execute "My VM" "c:\path\shgetfolder.exe" --username "MeMyself" --password "SuperPuperSecret" --wait-for stdout

was issued from the host.

And actually System (I guess you mean System account) is in control whether a user is logged in or not , since this is the account VBoxService.exe is running under. It is from this process the wrong environment was inherited. And if a process does not have a GUI, it should work fine with or without an actual user logged in.

[pentagonik]

Thanks for the report - the problem was reproduced and we're working on it.

[Nox Metus]

Thanks for the report - the problem was reproduced and we're working on it.

Hallelujah !

[Kristian Karl]

This issue is still very much a problem.
I can reproduce this problem on a Linux Host, using VirtualBox version 4.2.4 (81684)

Does this problem have a ticket [trouble report] number?

/Kristian