Text cursor always black with mouse integration (host ubuntu, guest winxp)

[maumac]

The default text selection cursor in WinXP is always the opposite color of the background you put it on. This works fine on my system, until I enable mouse integration. With this feature enabled the cursor is always black, regardless of the background, rendering it unusable in dark backgrounds.

To reproduce:

• Open ​http://www.blackle.com without mouse integration; cursor is white when you hover over the text box;
  
  
• Enable mouse integration; cursor is not visible anymore over the box.

Same happens with any arbitrary text editor (such as ​SciTE) configured with a ​black background.

Running Ubuntu Feisty as host, WinXP Pro as guest. Installed using the ​.deb package for Feisty/i386, guest additions installed.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Reproduced. We'll fix this.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Current limitation. You can work around it by disabling mouse pointer integration.

[maumac]

I finally ended using the "Windows Black" cursor scheme that is included in the default installation and works with any background, allowing me to keep mouse integration.

[Dimitri]

Ticket #1177 looks like a duplicate.

[Dimitri]

Ticket #1177 is certainly a duplicate, it's also triggered by mouse integration.

Problem is still there in VirtualBox 2.2.4.

[Dimitri]

Similar problem with PuTTY / VirtualBox 2.2.4:

Guest: Windows XP SP3 Host: Fedora 10 Application: PuTTY Tray 0.60 (r3) ​http://www.xs4all.nl/~whaa/putty/

The background of PuTTY is black, the cursor is black as well. The cursor is invisible.

[Dimitri]

The problem is still there with VirtualBox 3.0.10:

Guest: Windows XP SP3
Host: Fedora 11
Application: PuTTY Tray 0.60 (r3) ​http://www.xs4all.nl/~whaa/putty/

[Bjoern Olausson]

Triggered the same problem with VirtualBox 3.1.0 on Linux running a up to date Windows XP.

When I use Putty (black background) the Text cursor (I-beam) is not inverted and stays black so its barely visible.

Cheers Bjoern

[Hugo Monteiro]

I can confirm the same bug on the latest 3.1.2 r56127.

My host OS is Ubuntu Karmic 64bit version with the proprietary fglrx ATI driver on an Intel Core 2 Duo machine.

My guest OS is Windows XP SP3 32bit English version, with Guest Additions installed. Both 3D and 2D acceleration are enabled by default but changing either didn't have any effect on the issue.

Description: On apps like putty or SSH Secure Shell Client, when scheme colors are black background, the mouse cursor (I-Beam) stays black, making it invisible.

Temp fix: If one disables the mouse integration for the VM, the mouse cursor behaves as expected.

[Bjoern Olausson]

Bug confirmed with VirtualBox 3.1.2 r56127

I-Beam still not becomes inverted from black to white when using Putty (0.60) with black background in the guest OS

Guest: Windows XP SP3 32bit, En, Guest Additions 3.1.2r56127 installed Host: Gentoo Linunx 64bit, Kernel vanilla-2.6.31.6, proprietary Nvidia drivers 190.53

Kind regards Bjoern

[Bjoern Olausson]

Still present in 3.1.4 ...

No reactions from the devs on this one at all? Sad!

Kind regards Bjoern

[Dimitri]

Still present in 3.1.6...

[Bjoern Olausson]

Well, still present in 3.2.2

But I start to winder if this is a VBox problem.

Last week I was forced to use PuTTy on a virtual WindowsXP machine to which I was connected via the "VMware View Portal" and I observed the exact same problem.... Black I-Beam on black background.

Any suggestions where the bug hides itself?

Cheers Bjoern

[pixecs]

Still present in v. 3.2.8 Black I-Beam on black background in Borland® C++Builder® for Microsoft® Windows™, when mouse integration is enabled and guest OS is Windows XP.

[Patrick Golec]

Still present in 3.2.10. Black I-Beam on black background in Putty on Win 2008 Server guest.

[John Hart]

WORKAROUND!

In Windows, go to Control Panel > Mouse, "Pointers" tab. I did this in Win 2003, but I'm sure it's the same in XP (and similar enough in Vista or Win 7).

If you change the Scheme to "Windows Black", your I-Beam text select cursor will turn into a black cursor with a whiteoutline (no matter the background). This works perfectly well against black background text.

If you don't want to change your entire pointer scheme, you can change just that one cursor: in the "Customize" area, scroll down to the Text Select cursor and hit "Browse". In the ensuing file selection dialog - which opens to the right folder automatically - choose the "beam_r.cur" file. That's the one used in the "Windows Black" scheme.

[Patrick Golec]

Thanks a lot for that workaround, finnh!

Works great in Putty on my Win 2008 Server guest (so, it will work on Vista, too!).

[Dimitri]

Still present in 4.0.0...

[vbxusr]

Same in 4.0.8 but also in white Editorbox from IE9 and notpad

[scai]

Still present in version 4.1.12

[washirv]

Still present in 4.2.12.

[Daniel Doron]

Still present in 4.3.6 r91406 HOST: Ubuntu 13.10 64bit GUEST: Windows 8 64bit

[daleus]

Still present in 4.3.16 r95972 HOST: Xubuntu 14.04.1, Guest: Any Windows OS (7,8,2012, 32 and 64bit versions tested where applicable.)

Changing mouse cursor in Windows used to work fine but problem seems to have spread and become worse and now craps out with other cursors and makes a larger "black square" glitch on the screen (probably 2,3 times the size of before).

[jqdurham]

8 years seems like a reasonable amount of time to fix it. :o)

Work-around is working for me. Mac OSX Yosemite host with Win 7 Pro guest.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

The reason why this "bug" is still alive and kicking is that sandervl73 was right 8 years ago: it's a limitation. Not of VirtualBox, it's a limitation of X11. It can't handle XOR cursors at all. That's why there's so little progress. The proper fix would be to convince the X.org people to add the necessary functionality.

Trying to work around the issue in VirtualBox is rather complex: we'd need to introduce a new mode for handling mouse pointer drawing, "semi-integrated", where the mouse position handling is like with current mouse integration, but the mouse pointer is actually drawn by the guest OS in software (and not as it currently is done by the host using hardware). A LOT of effort for such a tiny issue.

[finnh2]

Replying to klaus:

The reason why this "bug" is still alive and kicking is that .. it's a limitation of X11. It can't handle XOR cursors at all. That's why there's so little progress.

Trying to work around the issue in VirtualBox is ... A LOT of effort for such a tiny issue.

Thanks for the detailed info, klaus. I completely agree that it's not worth a change in Virtualbox to mask the X11 issue. The workaround I posted in comment 17 (https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/750#comment:17) works fine ... once I've set it I completely forget about it.

[sabi_h]

Replying to klaus:

The reason why this "bug" is still alive and kicking is that sandervl73 was right 8 years ago: it's a limitation. Not of VirtualBox, it's a limitation of X11. It can't handle XOR cursors at all. That's why there's so little progress. The proper fix would be to convince the X.org people to add the necessary functionality.

Interestingly, the error is reproducible on MacOSX also. Note that on macs, the graphics server is called Quartz instead of X11.

Is there a similar limitation for Quartz too?

[Michael Thayer]

Could you please give the current test builds<1> a try? As usual, feel free to continue using them for any non-critical systems.

<1> https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds

[Frank Mehnert]

Fix is part of VBox 5.0.12.

[Mike446]

Updated to the current release of VirtualBox, I'm still getting a black box around my mouse cursor which prevents me from actually seeing what I am clicking on. Guest Additions are updated as well. I'll leave this up to someone else to choose whether to re-open this ticket or not.

Host: OpenSUSE Leap 42.1

Guests: Windows 7 && Windows 10

[DarkEnergy]

Hello,

it seems, that this problem returns with VB 5.1 . I use a Debian8-stable-guest (XFCE) on a Win7-host and created this guest on VB 5.0.16 with GA 5.0.16. Now I updated to VB 5.1.2 and got the mentioned black-box-cursor. After updating GA to 5.1.2 nothing changed, too.

The workaround with disabling mouse pointer integration works, but I think, this shouldn't be the solution. I also have some old Debian6-guests (XFCE), I migrated from VMware Workstation and updated to stable-repo on VB 5.0.4. These guests don't have the problem on VB 5.1.2

I bet, the problem disappears if I reinstall VB 5.0.16 .

Btw there seem to be some Arch-users with the problem, too. After updating to VB 5.1 the black cursor came. (​https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=214954)

Thank you in advance.

kind regards DarkEnergy

[danliston]

Vbox 5.1.2 with extension pack 5.1.2 - Host OS windows 10 pro - guest OS solaris 11.3: Guest was originally installed in VBox 5.0.12 with updates through 5.0.26, then 5.1.2. Removed, logged out, and installed SUNWvboxguest package to current extension pack and the mouse which was already a black pointer with a white border became a barely usable mostly black rectangle. If I remove SUNWvboxguest utils/drivers/extension pack, I get my mouse pointer back to normal (but lose all the other advantages of the extension pack). Reinstalling SUNWvboxguest package followed by logout/login and the pointer returns to a black rectangle with a few white pixels. Rebooting the guest OS (solaris 11.3) does not produce any change to the mouse.

I have done a "pkgrm SUNWvboxguest", shutdown, removed the 5.1.2 extension pack from Vbox Manager, and installed/reverted back to 5.0.26 extension pack. This resulted in a failure message that the extension pack was expecting version 5.0 got 5.1 and this required me to disable the USB 2.0 setting for the VM to boot/start. Even so, installing the extensions in the guest OS resulted in the same mouse pointer issue. This time it looks more like a flower pot than an arrow/pointer.

[sunlover]

DarkEnergy, danliston, this should be fixed in latest 5.1 builds (r109157+) from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds Please test. Thanks.

[DarkEnergy]

Hello sunlover,

thank you very much, the black-box-cursor does not appear anymore with VirtualBox-5.1.3-109189. I also tested some other 5.0.x-Versions (16,18,26) and the problem never appeared, so it seems to be only in 5.1.2 .

Btw. I was using VMware Workstation for many years and decided to switch to VirtualBox due to better Linux-support and community some month ago. I only want to say: great devs and community, great support. I regret not having switched some years earlier. Thank you.

kind regards DarkEnergy