For example, a shared family PC means that the kids are using Web browsers and surfing the wilds of the Internet. So unless you really need access to 3D acceleration, you might want to avoid this particular feature.īecause of these issues, VirtualBox is a great solution for power users, but probably not a good fit for non-technical PC users in a standard office environment.Why is it ok for employees to be idiots? If you have to shield the fact that they are running a Win XP app, maybe they shouldn't be allowed access to the computer system. Running a D3D app in seamless mode was less successful. Best results were obtained running the app with the VM running in its own window. However, the screen would occasionally become corrupted. We ran some older D3D games with full sound, game controls, and 3D acceleration.

VirtualBox supports virtualized access to the GPU with both OpenGL and Direct3D, but the D3D access is still a work in progress (it’s even labeled beta, and you have to explicitly enable it in the VirtualBox configuration screen).

The presence of the second task bar and the occasional visual glitches, if nothing else, make users aware that they’re not running a plain vanilla application on the host OS.īecause of these issues, VirtualBox is a great solution for power users, but probably not a good fit for non-technical PC users in a standard office environment. The problem with this approach is that the user is still aware, to some extent, that they’re running XP in a different kind of way. You still know you’re running in a VM, but it’s more transparent than just running a Windows XP virtual machine in a window, with the application constrained to that window. The window for the app runs, and it appears as if it’s running natively. When it works, you can simply run Windows XP apps from the XP taskbar.

Windows xp on windows 10 virtualbox