OSX 10.9.5 VBOX 5.1.32 keybord not working in GUI

[waldorfm]

Hello,

I'm experience a strange problem that is somewhat difficult to explain. When I add another drive in the VM settings, I can often only type 1 key in the disk name field and pressing any subsequent key simply bleeps - then nothing works, not even backspace or arrow keys. The same also happens when attempting to change the device size. The only thing what seems to help is to quit VirtualBox and try adding devices again, one at a time. Sometimes I can add more than one drive before the problem occurs, sometimes not.

The problem has occurred not just since the last 5.1.32 update, but already several versions earlier. I'm running OSX Mavericks 10.9.5 and have no desire to upgrade, hence Vbox 5.2 is currently no option. The Mac I'm using is a Mac Pro 3,1 with 2 X5482 CPU's and 16 GB RAM, US English. Other than Little Snitch, Firefox and using SoftRAID, there is nothing special installed. Changing the keyboard also didn't help. The machine otherwise functions very reliably.

Any ideas what might cause the problem with entering keys in the storage settings GUI? It also happens when accessing VirtualBox from another machine using screen sharing. FWIW, I thing the GUI isn't working properly, for example, the "create" button and "OK" button of the background window are highlighted, requiring to press the create button of the front-most window twice.

Thanks.

[socratis]

I'm running OSX Mavericks 10.9.5 and have no desire to upgrade, hence Vbox 5.2 is currently no option.

Why not exactly? VirtualBox runs just fine on 10.9.x. My build-from-source/testing system is a 10.9.5 VM.

Any ideas what might cause the problem with entering keys in the storage settings GUI?

Not a clue. The thing is that I have seen it too, so you're not alone. But I cannot make it happen reproducibly. It's a rare thing and I can't point the exact conditions that trigger it. It's a nuisance at this point, because usually cancelling out of a dialog/window "fixes" the issue.

I would describe it as "something hidden" gets the keyboard focus and doesn't let you switch between fields (with Tab for example), or enter anything.

Oh, BTW, I'm on 10.11.6 with various VirtualBox versions. I'm switching so often that I haven't even bothered to note the version. But I don't believe it's VirtualBox at this point, I believe that this started happening when Qt libraries were upgraded from 5.6.2 to 5.6.3.

[waldorfm]

Thanks for the response. Well, the GUI interface has always been somewhat troublesome for me, on several Apple computers. I've been using the product since version 4.0. My guess is that the front-window at some point looses the input and the interface return to the back-window, which is not in the focus. When I have the storage create setting open, I can see the Create button, but I need to press it twice when problem occurs, which also hits the OK button of the background window.

I haven't tried 5.2 since the documentation doesn't list 10.9 as a host OS anymore, showing version 10.10 as the lowest. So I thought 10.9 isn't support a anymore. I'll give it a try and report back.

Btw, some question. Is there an option to change my user/display name? I couldn't find one and I also don't see a contact. Thanks.

[waldorfm]

So I tried 5.2.6, which installed fine, but the problem still persists

I've uploaded a screen shot of the dialog. I can't change 5 to 50. In the dialog window, both the default Create and OK button are active.

Screen Shot .jpg (95.06 KiB) Viewed 2456 times

[socratis]

Yes, I guess that's kind of reproducible most of the times. I'll see how far back I can go with the versions to see if it is indeed a Qt 5.6.3 issue or not.