Guest screen in fullscreen freezes after 10 minutes of inactivity -> duplicate of #8122

[Konstantin Vlasov]

Host: Windows XP x64 SP2, VB 4.0.2
Guest: openSUSE 11.3 x64, GA installed, Desktop effects can be turned on or off (reproduced in either case)

I start the virtual machine in fullscreen mode on one of my two monitors and leave it for ~10 minutes untouched. After that the guest machine screen "freezes". That is, it no longer reflects what really happens in the machine, the contents remains frozen. E.g. if a screensaver starts, or some notification appears - nothing of it is shown on the screen, but I can see it happen in the small screenshot in the main VB window.

When in this state I move the mouse cursor into the machine, the whole screen suddenly becomes black, and only mouse cursor is visible, and it takes currect shape when I move it over different parts of the screen (that is, hand over hyperlinks, vertical line over Konsole window, arrow in other places). The machine also reacts to mouse clicks correctly - but again, I can see it only from the small screenshot, the main screen remains black.

When I press Host+F to switch into windowed mode, image of the virtual machine appears and everything returns to normal, until I return into full screen and leave it for another 10 minutes.

[Konstantin Vlasov]

openSUSE guest log

[Konstantin Vlasov]

Additional info: this happens not only with full-screen, but in windowed mode as well.

[Julio Lajara]

I have the same problem. The only way to correct it is to save the vm state and start it back up again (my setup is headless I dont have the CTRL+F option). Since saving the state is possible, I assume its not frozen in the background but just not repainting.

Ubuntu 10.10 host, Fedora 13 guest, GA installed.

Since my vm is headless I even attempted to stop vrde and start it again but the black screen remained.

[Eugene]

I encountered the same problem with VirtualBox 4.0.2 yesterday.

Host: Windows XP SP3 Pro, x86
Guest: OpenSUSE 11.3 x86

Going full screen and then back to windowed mode helps but, yes, after some time of inactivity the screen gets black again.

[rumen]

Look here #8122 I believe the published pre-release of guest additions will fix your problem too.

​http://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/VBoxGuestAdditions-r69551.iso

[Konstantin Vlasov]

Replying to rumen:
With this build the problem is partially fixed, thank you! Here are results of my tests.

1. If I set a screensaver Clock to start after 10 minutes of inactivity, then it indeed starts, works for several seconds and sudenly stops (freezes). However, when I move the mouse into the machine window, it returns to life and updates the screen contents correctly, the screensaver disapears.

2. If I set the screensaver to start after 1 minute of inactivity, then it starts and continue to work for ~9 minutes (i.e., ~10 minutes of summary inactivity), and then freezes, just like in the previous variant. Moving the mouse in the VM restores its functionality (turning the screensaver off).

3. If I turn screensaver off and leave the system untouched, then the screen does not freeze at all, everything continue to run, the clock in the taskbar updates the time, etc.

4. If I set the screensaver to start after more than 10 minutes (I tried 15, 16 and 20 minutes), then the screensaver starts in 10 minutes, and promptly freezes, exactly like in p.1.

[Michael Thayer]

This still sounds like a duplicate of #8122 to me. The problem is not the screensaver, but the guest entering power-saving mode and disabling the virtual monitors.