Author Topic: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox  (Read 3089 times)

arpost

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Hello! I am new to this community and installed ArcaOS 5.1.1 on VirtualBox 7.1.6 on a Windows 11 host. I never got an opportunity to use OS/2 back in the day, and I'm interested in its object-oriented design. The online instructions worked great, except that there's a mostly invisible thin box spanning the width of the desktop on either side of the mouse pointer that slightly corrupts text and graphics as I mouse around. I say "mostly" because when I shutdown ArcaOS and mouse over the confirmation dialog, the box becomes more visible and flickers. I confirmed that I have the version of the guest additions installed that matches my version of VirtualBox. I checked the config.sys, and there appear to be two mouse drivers installed: the vbox one and usbmouse. I commented out the usbmouse driver and restarted, and the behavior was the same. Back when I first installed ArcaOS, I tried just using the guest additions that were installed along with the OS, and the behavior was also the same. Oddly, the Mouse settings screen reports that the mouse driver is not correctly installed, and it also reported that when I was using the default guest additions. Video memory is set at the default (16mb), and increasing and decreasing video memory changed nothing. If I were using an old version of Windows, I'd say that I need to disable the hardware cursor, but I don't see any setting to do that. Have any of you seen and solved this problem?

Thanks,
Andrew

Martin Iturbide

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2025, 04:13:57 am »
Hello Andrew, welcome to the forum and the community.

It does not looks to me that usbmouse is giving you this problem, I think you can keep it on within the config.sys.
I also use ArcaOs 5.1.1 as a Vbox guest in Windows host and I don't have that issue. In my case I have 9MB of video memory assigned. Maybe it is more of a video driver issue.

Can you post a copy of the config.sys or run testlog to generate a log and get more information? (remove any personal information of the testlog report that you may not want to share)

Regards
« Last Edit: February 27, 2025, 03:14:58 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Neil Waldhauer

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2025, 03:12:33 pm »
I spoke with the mouse driver developer, and you can ignore the message in the mouse control panel that says the mouse driver is not correctly installed.
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arpost

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #3 on: March 02, 2025, 06:50:44 am »
Thank you both for your assistance! It turns out that the graphics corruption goes away entirely when I run ArcaOS full-screen. I was running it in a window before. Currently running it at 3840x2160x16, the native resolution of my monitor.

Andi B.

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2025, 11:53:57 am »
... running it at 3840x2160x16...
Do you really run it with 16 bit (65536 colors) or do you mean 32 bit (16M colors)?

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2025, 03:20:38 pm »
In UEFI mode, I also have to run at 3840 x 2160 x 16. In Legacy mode 3840 x 2160 x 32 works OK. VESA BIOS in 4K mode is flakey on several of my computers. This is one area where a video driver would be a plus.
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arpost

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2025, 11:31:21 pm »
I tried 32-bit color at first, but the workplace shell kept freezing up. 24-bit worked better, but moving and resizing windows left bits of the windows behind on screen.

Andi B.

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2025, 11:01:09 am »
In UEFI mode, I also have to run at 3840 x 2160 x 16. In Legacy mode 3840 x 2160 x 32 works OK. VESA BIOS in 4K mode is flakey on several of my computers. This is one area where a video driver would be a plus.
How do you setup 16 bit? I've only 16M colors and no other selection available here with Panorama (bare metal).

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: New install of ArcaOS 5.1.1: mouse and video corruption on VirtualBox
« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2025, 02:52:26 pm »
If you are in UEFI, then, on some computers, you can also turn on CSM support, and that will provide a 16-bit. On other computers this is not available, and you are stuck with 32-bit color.
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