The VirtualBox Windows Guest Additions are designed to be installed in a virtual machine running a Windows operating system. The following versions of Windows guests are supported:
• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows 2000 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows XP (any service pack)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (any service pack) • Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions)
• Microsoft Windows 7 Beta
Generally, it is strongly recommend to install the Windows Guest Additions.
4.2.1 Installing the Windows Guest Additions
After mounting the Guest Additions ISO file, the Windows guest should automatically start an the Guest Additions installer, which installs the Guest Additions into your Windows guest.
4.2.1.1 Mounting the Additions ISO file
In the “Devices” menu in the virtual machine’s menu bar, VirtualBox has a handy menu item named “Install guest additions”, which will automatically bring up the Additions in your VM window.
If you prefer to mount the additions manually, you can perform the following steps: 1. Start the virtual machine in which you have installed Windows.
2. Select “Mount CD/DVD-ROM” from the “Devices” menu in the virtual machine’s menu bar and then “CD/DVD-ROM image”. This brings up the Virtual Disk Man- ager described in chapter3.5,The Virtual Disk Manager, page43.
3. In the Virtual Disk Manager, press the “Add” button and browse your host file system for the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file:
• On a Windows host, you can find this file in the VirtualBox installation directory (usually under C:\Program files\Sun\xVM VirtualBox). • On Mac OS X hosts, you can find this file in the application bundle of VirtualBox. (Right click on the VirtualBox icon in Finder and choose Show Package Contents. There it is located in the Contents/MacOS folder.) • On a Linux host, you can find this file in the additions folder under where
you installed VirtualBox (normally /opt/VirtualBox/).
• On Solaris hosts, you can find this file in the additions folder under where you installed VirtualBox (normally /opt/VirtualBox).
4. Back in the Virtual Disk Manager, select that ISO file and press the “Select” but- ton. This will mount the ISO file and present it to your Windows guest as a CD-ROM.
4.2.1.2 Running the installer
Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows guest, Win- dows will now autostart the VirtualBox Guest Additions installation program from the Additions ISO. If the Autostart feature has been turned off, choose VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe from the CD/DVD drive inside the guest to start the installer.
The installer will add several device drivers to the Windows driver database and then invoke the hardware detection wizard.
Depending on your configuration, it might display warnings that the drivers are not digitally signed. You must confirm these in order to continue the installation and properly install the Additions.
After installation, reboot your guest operating system to activate the Additions.
4.2.2 Updating the Windows Guest Additions
Windows Guest Additions can be updated by running the installation program again, as previously described. This will then replace the previous Additions drivers with updated versions.
Alternatively, you may also open the Windows Device Manager and select “Update driver...“ for two devices:
1. the VirtualBox Graphics Adapter and 2. the VirtualBox System Device.
For each, choose to provide your own driver and use “Have Disk” to point the wizard to the CD-ROM drive with the Guest Additions.
4.2.3 Unattended Installation
In order to allow for completely unattended guest installations, you can specify a command line parameter to the install launcher:
VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /S
This automatically installs the right files and drivers for the corresponding platform (32- or 64-bit).
Note: Because of the drivers are not yet WHQL certified, you still might get
some driver installation popups, depending on the Windows guest version. For more options regarding unattended guest installations, consult the command line help by using the command:
4.2.4 Manual file extraction
If you would like to install the files and drivers manually, you can extract the files from the Windows Guest Additions setup by typing:
VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /extract
To explictly extract the Windows Guest Additions for another platform than the current running one (e.g. 64-bit files on a 32-bit system), you have to ex- ecute the appropriate platform installer (VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe or VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe) with the /extract parameter.
4.2.5 Windows Vista networking
Earlier versions of VirtualBox provided a virtual AMD PCNet Ethernet card to guests by default. Since Microsoft no longer ships a driver for that card with Windows (starting with Windows Vista), if you select Windows Vista or newer as the guest operating system for a virtual machine, VirtualBox will instead present a virtual Intel network controller to the guest (see chapter6.1,Virtual networking hardware, page82).
However, if for any reason you have a 32-bit Windows Vista VM that is configured to use an AMD PCNet card, you will have no networking in the guest initially.
As a convenience, VirtualBox ships with a 32-bit driver for the AMD PCnet card, which comes with the Windows Guest Additions. If you install these in a 32-bit Vista guest, the driver will automatically be installed as well. If, for some reason, you would like to install the driver manually, you can extract the required files from the Windows Guest Additions setup. Please consult chapter4.2.4,Manual file extraction, page64on how to achieve this. You will then find the AMD PCnet driver files in the x86\Network\AMD\netamd.infsubdirectory of the default install directory.
Alternatively, change the Vista guest’s VM settings to use an Intel networking card instead of the default AMD PCnet card; see chapter 3.7.7, Network settings, page52
for details.
Unfortunately, there is no 64-bit driver available for the AMD PCnet card. So for 64-bit Windows VMs, you should always use the Intel networking devices.