cannot chhose vm after installing windows 7

[olwo]

hello,

first, i am new to this forum and would like to say hello to everybody

my problem:
yesterday i installed a windows 7 vm on my macbook pro with os x lion. and after some grafical problems it worked great. BUT when i start the virtualbox manager it does only show the windows 7 vm and no other of my vm (like windows xp or os x leopard). the left side of the window that contained the machines disappeared. these other machines can only be started by clicking the .vbox file in the vm-machines folder, but it does not allow me to change settings of these machines anymore, as they do nocht appear in the manager. how do i get this right part of the window back?

i reinstalled it but no change.

anyone any idea?

regards
olaf

[Sasquatch]

Any visual help here? A picture says more than a 1000 words. Attach it here.

[olwo]

hello and thanks for the answer.

on the picture you see the manager window without the left part where normaly the vms appear. is there a preference that must be set or where is this part gone?

regards
olaf

[Sasquatch]

Put your mouse all the way to the left, then move the vertical slider to the right. Look at the cursor, it should change shape. You must have moved it on accident.

[olwo]

sorry but i cannot move anything - except that the existing window gets bigger (of course)... and there is nothing els to move... the mousecursor changes but only to expand the existing window...

there must be something else like a settup file or something. reinstalling does not change this behaviour (of course after deinstalling and a restart...)

help !

[Sasquatch]

Move the mouse a little more into the VB window if you change the size of the window. It's really trivial, you somehow made a move with your trackpad or mouse and it moved the separator to the far left, leaving you with no visible VM selector.

[theDaniel]

Move the mouse a little more into the VB window if you change the size of the window. It's really trivial, you somehow made a move with your trackpad or mouse and it moved the separator to the far left, leaving you with no visible VM selector.

@ olwo, Click the link below, v v. Watch the short little screencast. This is what Sasquatch is talking about.
http://nifty-neat.com/SlideOpen/ Due to bandwidth concerns, I'll probably take this down in a few days.

olwo, If you can't move the vertical slider, then
1.) Quit VirtualBox
2.) Open the file /Users/yourUserName/Library/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml
3.) Find where it says:

Code: Select all

<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/SplitterSizes" value="0,668"/>** or similar number

4.) The Zero is the problem. Change it to something else, like:

Code: Select all

<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/SplitterSizes" value="217,451"/>

5.) Save the file
6.) Open VirtualBox

-Daniel

[olwo]

hello daniel,

first thank you for the screencast - well, i know about moving edges and using the mouse, but sorry, this screencast did not help. i am still not able to move anything else then the existing, visible window in width

but after searching for that xml file i finally found your solution working... Thanks a lot for your help !!!!!!

regards Olaf

[theDaniel]

I found that if I move that slider all the way to the left and then quit. On the next launch of VB, the slider handle is no longer available and therefore it cannot be brought back to where I can see the VMs. This certainly should be a bug or, at the very least should not be a feature.

...after searching for that xml file i finally found your solution working... Thanks a lot for your help !!!!!!

You're quite welcome olwo!! Glad it worked for you.

-Daniel

[Sasquatch]

Then it would be an OSX only thing, because my Linux keeps the separator wide enough to always be moved. Apparently, OSX makes it 1 pixel wide, too narrow to even lock onto it. I would consider that a bug in OSX, but that's just me.

[theDaniel]

Then it would be an OSX only thing, because my Linux keeps the separator wide enough to always be moved. Apparently, OSX makes it 1 pixel wide, too narrow to even lock onto it. I would consider that a bug in OSX, but that's just me.

On the Mac OS Finder window I count 5 pixel area to grab the handle. Lets hope it's a bug. I mean, I've worked with some devs that make some insane feature in an app and this user thinks it's a bug, so I file a bug report and the dev says its a feature. That's why I said "This certainly should be a bug or, at the very least should not be a feature"

But like I said, too, if I slide it all the way left, once I've quit and reopened VirtualBox, the handle is gonzo, not there at all, not available.
That being the case, I looked in the xml and experimented with the numbers in that "ExtraData" entry. I'm happy the entry was there or olwo and I would both be in a fix.

-Daniel

[theDaniel]

I filed a bug report, Ticket #9812

[Sasquatch]

I tested with the value, turned it to 0,527 and even then I was able to change the slider back. I have access to a Mac at work, so I'll see if I can reproduce the problem there.

[theDaniel]

Tested on Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.8, and using VB v 4.0.4, the behavior is not present. Retested on Lion, Mac OS X 10.7.1, VB v 4.1.4, behavior still present.

[Sasquatch]

I was able to test it on one of our Macs that has 10.5.8. Here, I had no problems at all with 4.1.4. But, we also got some new Macbook Pros that came with Lion (10.7), which I updated to 10.7.2. I didn't test VB on them, because these laptops are for colleagues. First thing I noticed, was that I was able to resize windows using any side of the window, not just the bottom right as it is on Leopard. This is probably the reason it fails. The 'trigger space' overlaps. Make a bug report in the Bugtracker (separate account needed) to get this addressed. It would seem that the spacer in the OSX toolkit is just too small. Maybe it can be fixed, but it's possible it's a bug in the toolkit itself.