Installing Guest additionals breaks the usage of the mouse

[Frédéric Buclin]

Host: Mandriva Linux 2007.1 / KDE 3.5.4 (kernel 2.6.17-14): Linux localhost 2.6.17-14mdv #1 SMP Wed May 9 21:11:43 MDT 2007 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1600MHz GNU/Linux

Guest: Windows 2000 SP4

VirtualBox + Guest Additionals installed from the RPM available at virtualbox.org: VirtualBox-1.4.0_21864_mdv2007.1-1.i586.rpm

When installing guest additionals, I can longer use my mouse. It behaves as if my right button was always pushed, meaning I get the context menu all the time, preventing any click. Turning off the mouse integration doesn't help at all.

We should either fix this problem (probably a good idea), or let us install video drivers independently from mouse drivers as what I was looking for is the ability to have a better screen than the poor 16 colors in a 600x800 screen.

[Frédéric Buclin]

VBox.log for W2K

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Does this behaviour occur with other guests (linux/windows) after you install the additions?

[Frédéric Buclin]

The only installation disk I have is for Windows 2000, so I cannot test another Windows as guest. About Linux, the only distro I have is already installed as host. And I haven't enough place for another VM anyway.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if still relevant.

[Frédéric Buclin]

I installed VBox 2.0.2 on Mandriva Linux 2009.0, and the problem still occurs. My initial description still stands.

[Frank Mehnert]

Are you sure you updated the guest additions as well? Please uninstall the 1.4 additions before installing the 2.0.2 additions to be completely sure. Also I would suggest you to move to VirtualBox 2.0.6.

[Steve Fink]

I get the same behavior. Well, actually it's a little worse. The mouse totally freaks out. It seems to be sending a flurry of right click events. It also seems like I'm getting some mismatched key up/down events, but it's hard to tell for sure.

I am running VB 2.1.0 with CentOS 5 as the host and Win XP Pro as the guest. Everything was working fine until I installed the guest additions. I haven't been able to navigate to the Windows menu to uninstall the guest additions yet.

Shutting down the various VirtualBox-related processes I see via the Task Manager (using keyboard navigation) doesn't seem to fix it.

Disabling mouse integration has no effect.

Is there any way to get VB to not recognize that guest additions are available? (I don't know if that would work, but it'd be something to try)

[Steve Fink]

Log of Windows XP with mangled mouse under guest additions

[Steve Fink]

Update: yay! I finally managed to select the "uninstall guest additions" from within the guest. (It's difficult to do because the mouse craziness prevents many keyboard commands from working.)

That fixed the mouse.

I previously went in and got rid of c:\windows\system32\VBox* before booting Windows, which didn't help. I guess the vbox mouse service was lurking elsewhere.

When I'm brave, I will attempt to reinstall it and find some way of disabling just the mouse portion, but I won't have time for a little while.

[Steve Fink]

It's still here. I upgraded to 3.0.2 and installed the 3.0.2 guest additions, and the same thing is happening. I'll have to uninstall the guest additions again.

What else can I provide that would assist in fixing this?

[Christer]

Still broken. Running linux Mint 7 (ubuntu 9.04) as host and WinXp SP3 as guest.

Can I tell you something more to help you?

[Christer]

My mistake! The guest had a logitech mouse driver installed since long ago. When I uninstalled that, it all works for me. My apologies.

[Steve Fink]

Upgraded to 3.0.8 vbox, with guest additions not installed. Due to the above comment (thanks!), noticed that I had a Logitech mouse driver installed. Uninstalled it, rebooted. Installed guest additions. Still all messed up. Device manager still shows Logitech driver. Uninstalled it again (this time while guest additions installed.) Reinstalled guest additions 3.0.8. Much better! No longer getting a flurry of random mouse clicks.

Unfortunately, still bad enough that I had to uninstall guest additions again. Now, it only occasionally (every few seconds) receives spurious mouse events. They're still annoying, because they don't seem to come in down/up pairs; I think I'm only getting downs.

In addition, the mouse clicks are very very sluggish. Mouse movements are fairly fast, but still noticeably lag a little. Doubleclicks have to be very slow in order to be registered. Some clicks seem to go missing.

As with the original poster, I would love to be able to selectively install guest additions for problems like this. I mostly just want a shared clipboard. I don't understand Windows enough to know how to disable just the mouse driver portion of the additions.

[Brion Finlay]

Problem experienced on Windows Vista host running Windows XP guest

VirtualBox 3.1.4r57640 Guest Additions ISO dated 2/12/2010

Guest Additions are installed. Weird mouse behavior was not observed prior to installing guest additions.

Mouse is a logitech mouse and previously installed drivers (since this was an image from the previous computer) are logitech mouse drivers, which is a common point with some previous posters.

Behavior is rapid fire right mouse clicks, mouse dragging windows across the screen (consistently in a diagonally left-downward direction) Sometimes the right mouse clicks result in an application launch.

[Pete S]

I experience the exact same problems on Virtualbox 3.2.8 r64453 after installing guest additions.

Host is Debian Lenny AMD64 on 2.6.32 kernel from backports. Guest is Windows 2000 Professional SP4.

[Pete S]

The problem seems to be a collision between Logitech drivers and the drivers Virtualbox uses (Microsoft drivers I guess?). This seems to be a problem on non-virtualized systems as well.

Ideally the Guest Additions installation program should check and properly remove any conflicting mouse drivers present in the system.

Workaround

In my case I couldn't use the mouse and most of the keyboard was disabled but I found a workaround that probably works for everyone.

Basically the idea is to prevent the logitech drivers from running without using the guest keyboard/mouse.

I did it by using the utility VBoxManage guestcontrol to execute any command on the guest system.

Microsoft has a command line utility that is an alternative to the device manager. It can be found here: ​http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272

Extract the exe file and put the devcon.exe somewhere the guest system can access (I used a network share, p:\).

Then I listed all drivers in the system with:

VBoxManage guestcontrol execute "VM name goes here" "c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe" --arguments "/c p:\devcon driverfiles *" --username Administrator --password 1234 --wait-for stdout > driverfiles2.txt

Inside the listing I found:

ACPI\PNP0F03\4&1D401FB5&0
    Name: Logitech-compatible Mouse PS/2
    Driver installed from c:\winnt\inf\oem4.inf [LogiPS2]. 6 file(s) used by driver:
        C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\i8042prt.sys
        C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\mouclass.sys
        C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\L8042pr2.sys
        C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\lmouflt2.sys
        C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\lkbdflt2.sys
        C:\WINNT\system32\lcoinst.dll

I tried to remove ACPI\PNP0F03\4&1D401FB5&0 from the system but it didn't work as it got automatically reinstalled after the required reboot.

So I deleted c:\winnt\inf\oem4.inf so windows wouldn't find the information how to reinstall the Logitec drivers.

I did it like this:

VBoxManage guestcontrol execute "VM name goes here" "c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe" --arguments "/c del c:\winnt\inf\oem4.inf" --username Administrator --password 1234 --wait-for stdout

The windows installation on the guest was located at c:\winnt but that could be different on others. If you don't know you can check it with the %SYSTEMROOT% variable.

Like this:

VBoxManage guestcontrol execute "VM name goes here" "c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe" --arguments "/c echo %SYSTEMROOT%" --username Administrator --password 1234 --wait-for stdout

Hopefully someone finds this useful.

[Steve Fink]

Wow, that's handy. Also for reference, here's what I did to fix the problem after managing to uninstall guest additions despite the mouse craziness: (as in, this is the easy way, but it's probably only possible if your mouse isn't going crazy)

Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager. Select the mouse, right click properties. Driver/Update Driver. Choose "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)". Next. Then choose "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install." Next. Choose one of the "Microsoft PS/2 Mouse" entries, NOT the "PS/2 Compatible Mouse" or anything with Logitech in the name.

Man, that wasted a lot of my time.

Oh, and I found that hovering over the VirtualBox icon in the taskbar was a relatively safe place to park the mouse when it's going crazy. You can then have some luck with keyboard controls that way.

(Although I think I might have removed the driver files and rebooted with no mouse at all, then fixed it by navigating via keyboard. I can't remember.)

[Pete S]

Preventive measures

I just wanted to add that cleaning up the drivers before installing the guest additions is another option.

This is one way to do it:

1) Remove unused software like Logitech Mouseware under the windows control panel > add/remove programs.

2) Remove unused drivers with the Device Manager. You need to add an environment variable before starting to be able to see unused devices in the system.

From a command window:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

or add devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices under properties for "My Computer">System Properties>Adavnced>Environment Variables. Set value to 1.

Then start the Device Manager and select View > Show Hidden Devices.

Unused devices will be greyish. Uninstall those not present in the system.

When converting a physical machine to a virtual there will be a bunch on unused drivers in the system.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please reopen if still relevant with VBox 4.3.16.