File Explorer dialog box not opening

[Bullfrog]

Hi

I'm new here so hello all.

Sometime in the last few weeks I've run into a problem when running virtual box, there have been a few upgrades and I'm currently running version 4.2.12r84980.

Both problems appear to be related.

1) If I try and import a virtual appliance - when I click on "Open Appliance" where I used to get a dialog box opening that allowed me to browse for an OVF file nothing actually happens, no dialog box appears so I can't browse for the file.

2) If I try to add an existing hard drive to either an existing virtual machine or a new one, when I click on "Choose existing disk", on an existing machine the dialog "You are about to add a virtual disk to... with the choices, Create New Disk , Choose existing disk, cancel". If I click "Choose existing disk" the dialog box closes , I don't get to browse for my VDI/VMDK and no hard disk gets added.

Any suggestions? I'm inclined to uninstall, re-install virtual box but I'm not sure if my existing virtual machines guests would get deleted.

Thanks

Bullfrog

[mpack]

I agree that you should fully uninstall, then reinstall.

Also, give us some hint of which host OS is involved?

[Bullfrog]

Ah Yes meant to say that the host was windows XP SP3.

Will uninstalling delete my existing Guests?

Thanks for responding.

Bullfrog

[mpack]

No, the guests are data as far as the host is concerned, and data is not affected when you uninstall or reinstall software.

Moving this topic to "Windows Hosts".

[Bullfrog]

Hi

I'm sorry to report that uninstalling and re-installing Virtualbox, both of which were followed by a host machine reboot just to be sure, did not resolve the problem. I'm wondering what function the host virtual box calls to open the file browser, I'm having no issues browsing for files in Microsoft Office for instance, but then it is probably using it's own library as it were.

Any other suggestions for pinning this down?

Thanks

Bullfrog(2)

[mpack]

The file open dialog box is the standard one provided by the Windows common controls DLL, though I assume there's probably a QT wrapper around it that VBox calls. I'm assuming that if the VBox GUI had also hung then you would have mentioned it, so it seems that this call must be failing for some reason, though I can't think what. All obvious reasons should have been cured by complete uninstall/reinstall.

[Bullfrog]

Thank you mpack

The Gui is behaving correctly , I can start/stop VM's without issue and also alter settings etc.

The information relating to common controls has led me to a new line of enquiry, about 7/8 weeks ago I had a problem getting the machine to boot, problem with the files gdi32.dll, comctl32.dll and msvcrt.dll. I'm guessing in my attempt to fix the inability to boot, I've ended up with a mismatch which is only manifesting itself in virtualbox at the moment, and as I've only just discovered this problem, I hadn't associated the two events, so I suspect I have a windows issue rather than a virtual box one. At this moment I'm trying to find some method of either re-installing some recent hot fixes to see if they replace those files, or some method of re-installling the common controls component. Anyway I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again

Bullfrog(2)