Before I upgrade VirtualBox-4-1.4-rsomething-Linux-amd64 to VirtualBox-4.1.6-74727-Linux_amd64 on a Slackware 64-bit 13.37 box running Win7 64-bit in a virtual machine I'm wondering if enabling Intel VT for Direct I/O in the BIOS might solve a problem and not cause any unintended problems in Slackware (Win7 is is booted, oh, just about every Patch Tuesday but not often otherwise).

The problem in Win7 is that I cannot enable 3-D acceleration. I have tried installing the guest additions in Windows safe mode (as instructed by VirtualBox) but have been unsuccessful. Just wondering if enabling Intel VT would help with no penalty or is there something else that might be good to try?

Enabling Intel VT in the hosts BIOS is not going to impact 3D acceleration in the guest. Having said that, there's no reason not to enable VT in the BIOS, and general performance would likely improve.

Now, as for 3D... Do you have 3D acceleration working in the host OS? What video card and drivers are you using?

Adam

Hey, thanks for that.

Yes, 3D acceleration does appear to work on the host -- it's
Or maybe not, but all the effects and stuff in KDE work and at one time this machine did have Win7 installed -- came with it, blew it away, it's a 100% Slackware box with Win7 as a guest only -- and all the Winy7 eye candy worked.

For some reason that I'm not sure of installing guest additions has not allowed 3-D -- maybe I've got something not set in VirtualBox?

Looking at the set up, I do not have PAE/NX enabled, both VT-x/AMD-V and Nested Paging are enabled, I can check 3-D acceleration but, say, starting the Solitare game says there's not hardware acceleration and I'm at a loss.

Bring up dxdiag in the guest, go to the Display tab, and see if it shows direct3d acceleration as enabled. What "Chip Type" does it show?

Do you know where VirtualBox is storing the log file for this guest?

Adam

Hm. It shows Direct3D Acceleration not available (oh, darn!). The other stuff is VirtualBox Graphics Adapter, chip VBOX, DAC type integrated RAMDAC, Total Memory 29.0 MB, Display Mode 1280x768 (32-bit) (60Hz) and Monitor generic non-PnP monitor. The Main Driver VBoxDisp. I suppose that's not too surprising.

The only log I know of is /var/log/vbox-install.log unless there's another one somewhere by a different name.

What's the name of your Windows 7 VM? There should be a directory called ~/VirtualBox VM/Windows 7/Logs or ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/Windows 7/Logs

Replace "Windows 7" with the actual name of your Windows 7 VM. Inside that directory there should be a VBox.log. Pastebin the file and give us the link or include it here between [code][/code] tags.

Adam

Well, duh! It's /var/lib/virtual/Machines/Win7/Logs (where /dev/sda8 on /var/lib/virtual type ext4 (rw,commit=0); it's a mounted 92G partition with 30G assigned to Win7).

The log ought to be attached.

Attached Files

VBox.log (81.9 KB, 27 views)

Alright, so it clearly detects that 3D acceleration is available from the host. I have no experience with Windows 7 (or even Vista) in virtualbox, but in Windows XP, direct3d 9 is available on a machine with an even older Intel GPU. Perhaps Windows 7 requires a more powerful GPU for direct3d acceleration? When you installed the guest additions in safe-mode, you did make sure to check the box for direct3d acceleration, right?

Adam

Well, like I said, when Win7 was on the thing (I had to pay the Microsoft Tax when I bought from Dell), all that 3-D stuff worked. It seems that the guest additions from the previous releases of VirtualBox just didn't want to "take" or something. I'm thinking that a good approach may be to upgrade to VirtualBox-4.1.6-74727-Linux_amd64 and give that a shot and see what happens; after all, the video drivers are VBox and maybe there's an improved driver or something.

I'm going to do that shortly and see.

Thank you for all your time and effort, it is appreciated.

As you said, the video drivers are VBox, so the fact that 3D acceleration worked fine when you were running Windows 7 is completely irrelevant to this situation.

In any case, you are correct, it can't hurt to update virtualbox and the guest additions, and that would be my next suggestion anyway.

Adam

I never would have installed guest additions in safe mode. Safe mode may have used the vesa driver instead of the virtualbox driver.

I think you have to load the latest guest additions and install it as admin user in a normal boot. They have to work.

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#guestadd-3d

Only the experimental WDDM driver can be installed outside of safe-mode. The normal direct3d driver for VirtualBox window's guests must be installed in safe-mode. I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) that the OP is trying to use the normal, non-experimental driver, but that might be an option for him.

Adam