virtualbox.org

Just updating VirtualBox from 4.x to 5.x won't break XP VMs (or we'd have a lot more complaints). But you mentioned something about a Synaptics driver. I'm certain that had something to do with it. What exactly was the driver, and how did it end up being installed in the VM? I could probably install it in my VM, but I don't know what to look for.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Synapti ... 8&oe=utf-8

Note the bit about "OEM-customized". That's why I'm asking.

I saw that. I assumed that was for pre-installed drivers. Since the user was running a guest I thought he may have installed them himself. I suppose his XP guests could have been imaged from a PC. I'll shut up now.

loukingjr wrote:I saw that. I assumed that was for pre-installed drivers. Since the user was running a guest I thought he may have installed them himself. I suppose his XP guests could have been imaged from a PC. I'll shut up now.

Those are exactly my questions I just don't know.

I have no idea where the Synaptics driver came from. Both that and the generic PS2 mouse drivers were installed. Not having had any problem with XP as a guest OS before, I never had a reason to examine the pointing device installations before this upgrade exposed the issue. Finding the same issue on two very different systems was another oddity.

That's too bad. Were the VMs installed in VirtualBox or did they originally come from somewhere else?

Were these XP VMs originally P2V'd?

@mpack--not sure what P2V means.
@michaln--VMs were originally installed using a prior VBox version.

P2V means physical to virtual.

If the VMs were created by "P2V" conversion of existing systems, it would be reasonable (even likely) for the Synaptics drivers to be carried over. But if these VMs lived their entire life as VirtualBox VMs, I'm really mystified why there were any Synaptics drivers at all.

I think I reproduced the problem with version 10.1.8 drivers from Synaptic's site. But... it would have failed exactly the same in VirtualBox 4.x. Weird.

@michain, I've never done a P2V conversion, but I'd really like to try. I have a system with a lot of programs and data that I use for a very specific application that I'd like to preserve b/c it would be tedious and time consuming to reconstruct the system on new hardware. I don't know where the Synaptic drivers came from either. These are natively created vdi files.

It's just a mystery. As far as I can tell, the Synaptics drivers are not and never were shipped with Windows, so someone must have explicitly installed them in your VM. The other mystery is that those drivers never seem to have worked with VirtualBox (98% certain). Based on the lack of complaints from other users, your setup must be quite unusual.

Was this a "clean" XP installation or was it some customized OEM version? The latter could explain the Synaptics drivers.

The behavior that you initially described is caused by a bizarre ("historical reasons") way VirtualBox handles mouse input with Guest Additions installed. The movement data is passed through the custom VirtualBox device, but mouse clicks go through normal PS/2 mouse emulation. That's why the Synaptics driver was involved in processing mouse clicks but not movement.

I have very little experience with P2V so I can't tell you much about it.