virtualbox.org

michaln wrote:So far the problem has only been seen on Windows hosts

...and is it my idea, or is it only Linux guests that are affected?

It affects Windows guests also, but VB uses AC97 as the default only for Windows XP, for Vista and newer it uses HD Audio.
For Linux guests as far as I could tell it uses AC97 as the default regardless of distro selected.

Thanks 'tonny', that makes sense...

Sounds like something that should be added to Socratis' list of template tweaks, assuming that all modern Linux distros support Intel and RealTek HD Audio. The problems I read about online (slight hardware differences between physical PCs) don't apply to a VM.

mpack wrote:Sounds like something that should be added to Socratis' list of template tweaks

I don't have one (I have only one thing in mind), but it may be worth it that we start compiling one, until pending issued get fixed. Not a bad idea at all. For example:

• VirtualBox 5.1.26, Win Host, AC97 sound card => change the sound card to Intel HDA.
• VirtuaBox any, new Apple computer, older OSX guests => change the CPU to something older (that's the one I had in mind).
• Newer Kali Linux requires 20 GB of hard drive, otherwise it fails "silently".
• ...
• Profit!

Oh, I thought you mentioned elsewhere that you were making a list. Never mind then.

mpack wrote:Sounds like something that should be added to Socratis' list of template tweaks, assuming that all modern Linux distros support Intel and RealTek HD Audio.

The defaults are chosen for good reasons. Using HDA emulation will cause problems with some Linux distros.

Of course if users reading these forums concluded that using audio with VirtualBox VMs is unsafe, it would be somewhat difficult to argue with.

Given that I was right initially and the 5.1.26 build at least contains problems with the sound system (AC'97 emulation), is it worth waiting for a minor build with fixes in the near future?

Looks like there is now a testbuild containing a fix for the AC97 bug:
viewtopic.php?p=398892#p398892

I'm running Version 5.1.26 r117224 (Qt5.6.2) on a Win 7 Pro 64-bit host, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS guest.
VBoxGuestAdditions.iso is installed.

And all is well so far, except .. I lost my VM menu bar, and cant get it back! The status bar is still visible.

The following approaches have all failed:

• Maximised or not, still missing.
• <HOST> + HOME .. the green down arrow in the status bar shows "depressed"; but no anticipated menu pops up. Tried assigning alternative shortcuts with same non-results.
• In VirtualBox Manager, File > Preferences > Input > Virtual Machine .. created a shortcut for "Show Menu Bar"; but same results as "<HOST> + HOME" above, and still no menu bar.
• In VirtualBox Manager, VM settings > User Interface .. checked, unchecked the sample menu bar .. but to no effect.
• From the commandline ..

  Code: Select all

  cd C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox
  VBoxManage.exe setextradata global GUI/Customizations MenuBar

  .. no error, but no effect when restarting the guest VM.
• Couldn't find any xml file to edit (which appears to be one option for ubuntu hosts).
• Couldn't find any registry setting that looked promising.

And yes, where applicable, i tried all these with the VirtualBox Manager shut down (not running) before loading the guest VM again.

Unless I'm mistaken, all of these approaches should work in Version 5.1.26 (except maybe the xml file). And for the record, i tested a few of the other <HOST>+<key> shortcuts, and they worked. I even tried changing the <HOST> key, and that worked fine too (except for the <HOME> popup, and "Show Menu Bar" command).

---------------------------------------------------------------
Workaround = Rebuild Entire new guest VM
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marcthin wrote:I can confirm that there is a read write error on release 5.1.26. I use windows 10 latest 15063-483.

I rolback to 5.1.24 and al works oke.

had to rollback too