virtualbox.org

Hi,

I wish to reverse the scroll wheel direction, so my Win10 guest uses what would be referred to as "Natural Scrolling" on a Mac. My Linux host has this setting and it works well, however even when setting the "FlipFlopWheel" registry key in my Windows guest, Windows scrolling is still traditional/unreversed.
I believe this is because the FlipFlopWheel setting in Windows does not work for a PS/2 mouse, and Virtualbox's most basic mouse emulation emulates a PS/2 mouse instead of a USB mouse (even though I have my guest set to "USB Tablet" input, and Guest Additions installed). What I guess is happening is that mouse position events are being sent with the emulated USB tablet, and mouse click events (incl scroll events) are being sent with the emulated PS/2 mouse.

Is there any way to get Virtualbox to send mouse click events with an emulated USB device instead of PS/2, while USB Tablet is enabled?

Cheers
Jarrad

Aside from crossing the scrollwheel wires inside the mouse?

The three pointing devices seem to be PS/2 Mouse, USB Tablet, and USB Multi-touch Tablet. Seems the developers have not emulated a USB mouse.

I would ask the developers on the Mailing List or Chat, see https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Community, to see if this deduction on your part is correct. After that, you'd have to suggest a USB mouse as an Enhancement, and either wait for the devs to make it (could be a while) or crack out the source code and emulate one yourself.

Personally, I would suspect there will be a rather long wait for the developers to feel that a USB mouse would be better than a PS/2 mouse (unless they're doing it already for a big super-rich licensed Oracle customer), and I'd get out my soldering iron and see about swapping those mouse scrollwheel wires....

Akdor 1154 wrote:Virtualbox's most basic mouse emulation emulates a PS/2 mouse instead of a USB mouse

scottgus1 wrote:Seems the developers have not emulated a USB mouse.

Excuse me, both of you, but how exactly did you determine that, if you select "USB tablet" in the VM settings, the mouse is set to PS/2? Based on what? The FlipFlopWheel? I hope not.

If you look in the device manager you'll see an "HID-compliant mouse". If you set the VM settings to "PS/2 mouse" that entry is gone. You can have "USB Tablet" in the settings and you can actually uninstall the PS/2 driver from Windows 10.

All I did was look at the items in the Pointing Device dropdown, and took a shot from the hip. Switching my Windows 7 guest's device from PS/2 to USB Tablet did put a "HID-compliant mouse", like my Windows 10 host with USB mouse shows. Guess my shot went wide...

The VM in question is at work and I won't be back until Friday to check, but I believe that there was a PS/2 mouse listed in the guest's Device Manager when USB Tablet was selected in the guest's VM options, and I drew a conclusion (maybe incorrectly!) that mouse movement events were sent with the USB tablet driver, but button events were sent with the PS/2 driver (partly based on information here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/MouseInput ). This deduction was supported by the (probable, but undocumented) fact that FlipFlopWheel does not work with PS/2 devices. I'll investigate more on Friday when I have the VM handy.

With the VM settings set to USB Tablet, if I go into Device Manager on the guest, and disable everything but the PS/2 mouse, mouse input still works. I am unable to disable the PS/2 mouse itself. If I uninstall the PS/2 mouse, it asks for a reboot to make the change, however it is present again after the reboot.

Does this support my contention that VirtualBox is sending events with the PS/2 driver even when USB Tablet is selected?

--

Ooh, yay! In the quest to try and force-disable the PS/2 mouse to prove my point(er!), I tried to force the driver to something stupid to stop the PS/2 device from working. While looking for suitable stupid drivers, I noticed in the list a "HID-Compliant Mouse (WhFlip)". Selecting this for the PS/2 driver gives me the desired flipped scrolling in VirtualBox. Original problem solved!

Akdor 1154 wrote:I noticed in the list a "HID-Compliant Mouse (WhFlip)". Selecting this for the PS/2 driver gives me the desired flipped scrolling in VirtualBox. Original problem solved!

Thank you for posting the solution. And the link to the Wiki, I didn't know about that one. Nice!

Just for completion (and because it took me more than a couple of minutes to find it), go to Device Manager » Mice and other pointing device » HID-compliant mouse » right click and Update driver... » Browse my computer » Let me pick a device » uncheck the Show compatible hardware » Manufacturer: Microsoft, Model:HID-compliant mouse (WhFlip).

Of course I couldn't get it to work, but that's another story

socratis wrote:Just for completion (and because it took me more than a couple of minutes to find it), go to Device Manager » Mice and other pointing device » HID-compliant mouse » right click and Update driver... » Browse my computer » Let me pick a device » uncheck the Show compatible hardware » Manufacturer: Microsoft, Model:HID-compliant mouse (WhFlip).

Of course I couldn't get it to work, but that's another story

Nearly, the original device is (probably! this may differ between installations) called a PS/2 mouse (I forget the exact wording, but "PS/2" is definitely in there. The Hardware ID will also be something like ACPI... instead of a Vendor and Device ID).

If there is no PS/2 mouse listed in your guest's Device Manager, then it's possible our VirtualBoxes are set up differently and sending inputs in a different way (I am on a Linux host). If this is the case then don't do the above, you should be able to just set "FlipFlopWheel" in the registry as normal.

OK, you'll need to do better than that if you want me to follow/verify. Not "something like that" or "not the exact wording". I'm gonna be lost