4.2. Installing and Maintaining Guest Additions

• 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 Server 2008

• Microsoft Windows Vista (all editions)

• Microsoft Windows 7 (all editions)

• Microsoft Windows 8 (all editions)

• Microsoft Windows 10 RTM build 10240

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012

In the "Devices" menu in the virtual machine's menu bar, VirtualBox has a handy menu item named "Insert Guest Additions CD image", which mounts the Guest Additions ISO file inside your virtual machine. A Windows guest should then automatically start the Guest Additions installer, which installs the Guest Additions into your Windows guest. Other guest operating systems (or if automatic start of software on CD is disabled) need manual start of the installer.

If you prefer to mount the additions manually, you can perform the following steps:

Unless you have the Autostart feature disabled in your Windows guest, Windows 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.

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:

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.

As a prerequisite for avoid popups while performing an unattended installation of the VirtualBox Guest Additions, the code signing certificates used to sign the drivers needs to be installed in the right certificates stores in the guest system. Failing to do this will cause a typical windows installation to pop up a dialog asking whether its allowable to install each driver.

Since VirtualBox 4.2 installing those code signing certificates on a Windows guest can be done in an automated fashion using the VBoxCertUtil.exe utility found on the Guest Additions installation CD in the cert folder:

Prior to VirtualBox 4.2 the code signing certificates need to be imported in more manual style using the certutil.exe utility, which is shipped since Windows Vista. For Windows versions before Vista you need to download and install certutil.exe manually. Since the certificates are not accompanied on the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD-ROM prior to 4.2, these need to get extracted from a signed VirtualBox executable first.

In the following example the needed certificates will be extracted from the VirtualBox Windows Guest Additions installer on the CD-ROM:

After exporting the two certificates above they can be imported into the certificate store using the certutil.exe utility:

certutil -addstore -f Root "<Path to exported certificate file>"

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).

For more options regarding unattended guest installations, consult the command line help by using the command:

VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe /?

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 explicitly 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 execute the appropriate platform installer (VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe or VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe) with the /extract parameter.

• Oracle Linux as of version 5 including UEK kernels;

• Fedora as of Fedora Core 4;

• Redhat Enterprise Linux as of version 3;

• SUSE and openSUSE Linux as of version 9;

• Ubuntu as of version 5.10.

The VirtualBox Guest Additions for Linux are provided on the same virtual CD-ROM file as the Guest Additions for Windows described above. They also come with an installation program guiding you through the setup process, although, due to the significant differences between Linux distributions, installation may be slightly more complex.

Installation generally involves the following steps:

In Linux and Solaris guests, VirtualBox graphics and mouse integration goes through the X Window System. VirtualBox can use the X.Org variant of the system (or XFree86 version 4.3 which is identical to the first X.Org release). During the installation process, the X.Org display server will be set up to use the graphics and mouse drivers which come with the Guest Additions.

After installing the Guest Additions into a fresh installation of a supported Linux distribution or Solaris system (many unsupported systems will work correctly too), the guest's graphics mode will change to fit the size of the VirtualBox window on the host when it is resized. You can also ask the guest system to switch to a particular resolution by sending a "video mode hint" using the VBoxManage tool.

Multiple guest monitors are supported in guests using the X.Org server version 1.3 (which is part of release 7.3 of the X Window System version 11) or a later version. The layout of the guest screens can be adjusted as needed using the tools which come with the guest operating system.

If you want to understand more about the details of how the X.Org drivers are set up (in particular if you wish to use them in a setting which our installer doesn't handle correctly), you should read Section 9.4.2, “Guest graphics and mouse driver setup in depth”.

The Guest Additions can simply be updated by going through the installation procedure again with an updated CD-ROM image. This will replace the drivers with updated versions. You should reboot after updating the Guest Additions.

If you have a version of the Guest Additions installed on your virtual machine and wish to remove it without installing new ones, you can do so by inserting the Guest Additions CD image into the virtual CD-ROM drive as described above and running the installer for the current Guest Additions with the "uninstall" parameter from the path that the CD image is mounted on in the guest:

sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall

While this will normally work without issues, you may need to do some manual cleanup of the guest (particularly of the XFree86Config or xorg.conf file) in some cases, particularly if the Additions version installed or the guest operating system were very old, or if you made your own changes to the Guest Additions setup after you installed them.

Starting with version 3.1.0, you can uninstall the Additions by invoking

/opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.2.4/uninstall.sh

Please replace /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-5.2.4 with the correct Guest Additions installation directory.

• Solaris 11 including Solaris 11 Express;

• Solaris 10 (u5 and higher);

The VirtualBox Guest Additions for Solaris are provided on the same ISO CD-ROM as the Additions for Windows and Linux described above. They also come with an installation program guiding you through the setup process.

Installation involves the following steps:

The Solaris Guest Additions can be safely removed by removing the package from the guest. Open a root terminal session and execute:

pkgrm SUNWvboxguest

The Guest Additions should be updated by first uninstalling the existing Guest Additions and then installing the new ones. Attempting to install new Guest Additions without removing the existing ones is not possible.

^[18] An experimental WDDM driver was added with VirtualBox 4.1.