Weird mouse behaviour with 5.1.6

[SkiAddict1]

I have just upgraded from VB 4.3.36 to 5.1.6, running on OS 10.11.5. My drive container, running OS 10.6.3, works fine...except that I now have two mouse pointers! Worse, their offset isn't even constant. Around the middle of my virtual desktop they coincide; when I move the mouse to the sides they diverge more and more. This is very disconcerting and makes using my 10.6.3 very difficult.

I can't be uniquely cursed...is there a known fix for this?

[socratis]

Known issue. Ticket #15610: Host cursor visible in guest, produces double cursors by yours truly. It is apparent in all the guests that do not have Guest Additions installed. It's more pronounced in OSX guests from 10.5 to 10.9 because of the scaling factor that OSX uses for its mouse movements. Read the details in the bug report and add yourself (by commenting) so that you'll be notified when (hopefully) this gets fixed.

Funny effect: there are cases where a dialog will appear with an 'OK' and a 'Cancel' buttons. One cursor is over the 'OK' the other over 'Cancel'. Russian roulette...

[SkiAddict1]

Ah, many thanks socratis, will add myself in a minute.

I only upgraded because I got sick of the message telling me a new version was available. I can easily ignore that -- to your knowledge is downgrading possible? I tried double-clicking on my 4.3.36 and the 5.1.6 launched. But I have copies of everything (I think) VB from before the upgrade. If I put them back should it work? I'd rather not risk getting into a situation where both versions are in a hissy fit at me...

[socratis]

One thing you can't do is to have two versions of VirtualBox in parallel. Having said that, if you want to downgrade, it's easy.

1. Make sure that no VMs or VirtualBox itself are running.
2. Mount the "VirtualBox-X.Y.Z-abcdef-OSX.dmg" image that matches the version you have installed (in your case "VirtualBox-5.1.6-110634-OSX.dmg").
3. Open up Terminal and type "/Volumes/VirtualBox/VirtualBox_Uninstall.tool". Alternatively, double-click on the "VirtualBox_Uninstall.tool" on the mounted volume. VirtualBox and its Extension Pack are completely uninstalled. Your VMs and your settings are not affected.
4. Unmount the VirtualBox volume.
5. Continue with the installation of whatever VirtualBox version you wish, as you would normally do.

I don't remember at which VirtualBox version supported 10.11.x, but I don't think 4.3 was one of them. You can definitely try the latest 5.0.x series which does not have this bug.

PS. You can turn off notifications in the VirtualBox preferences, Update.

[SkiAddict1]

Awesome, thanks so much socratis. I've downgraded and can confirm that 4.3.36 definitely launches on 10.11.5 and mouse now behaving itself again

[shermanator]

This is still happening with 5.1.14. Specifically with a Mac OS 10.6.8 guest running in a Mac OS 10.12.3 host on a late 2016 MacBook Pro.

[socratis]

First of all, welcome to the club shermanator. I take it that your 10.6 client is up and running...
Well, if you look at the ticket or read the whole thread, this started in the 5.1.x beta. So, if you want it to "go away", downgrade to the 5.0.x series. Adding a "me too" here won't get you far, or get the issue fixed. Go to the ticket and post your host, guest and VirtualBox details. The more data points the developers have the better they can understand the bug.