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Windows guest 'grabs' host - will not let go

Posted: 3. Jul 2015, 06:06
by chiller791
Yo Everybody - hope somebody can help me solve this rather severe issue with Windows XP guest playing a bit of havoc with the Win7 host it's running on. Love virtual box.....first real issue I've have.

Here's the deal folks - I have some biometrics software that *has* to run on Windows XP. It uses a USB fingerprint reader that runs in both XP or Win7.

After fighting with the guest OS for quite awhile I finally got the USB device to be recognized in the guest. It works for a minute, but then I get another problem. The guest 'grabs' the KB from the host and *will not* return it. At that point the mouse refuses to work at all, and my KB only works in the guest. Right CTRL refuses to work, and there's no way I've found to return control to the host . I'm forced to cold start the host to get access back, and this forces me into the same loop. Using all recent versions of VirtualBox and extensions.

Any ideas what the heck is going on?

Re: Windows guest 'grabs' host - will not let go

Posted: 3. Jul 2015, 08:00
by mpack
chiller791 wrote:Any ideas what the heck is going on?
Yes, it's quite clear what's going on. The keyboard and mouse are USB devices too, and you are stealing them from the host and assigning them exclusively to the VM. The host will be difficult to operate without a keyboard or mouse. And since integration involves receiving keyboard and mouse input from the host, the VM will be a tad tricky to use as well.

Create or modify the USB filter in the VM settings, and flesh the filter fields out just enough to ensure that it matches only the intended device.