Download VirtualBox 4.0.0 Beta 2

VirtualBox can be used to install other operating systems in a virtual environment on a computer. In this way it is possible to use different OS’s on the same hardware. The application is available for Windows XP and later, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris, and can run a variety of guest operating systems. The developers have been working hard in recent days and have released the second beta version of VirtualBox 4.0.0. The corresponding announcement looks like this:

VirtualBox 4.0.0 Beta 2 released

Please do NOT use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines. A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes.

Please do NOT open bug reports at but use our VirtualBox Beta Feedback forum to report any problems with the Beta. Please concentrate on reporting regressions since VirtualBox 3.2.12 / VirtualBox 4.0.0 Beta 1.

Note: As of version 4.0, VirtualBox introduces the Extension Pack mechanism which allows Oracle and 3rd parties to deliver additional functionality on top of the standard Open Source product. The Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack, adds support for USB 2.0, RDP server and the PXE bootloader with E1000 support. You can download this Pack from the same location and install it via the VirtualBox Global Settings using the Extensions pane.

This is the second beta of the upcoming 4.0 release. The following items were added/fixed since VirtualBox 4.0.0 Beta 1:

• ExtPacks: show a confirmation dialog before installing an extpack
• ICH9 chipset: fix Windows detection of the 82801IB host bridge
• Linux hosts: fixed a wrong dependency to libstdc++5 in the Oracle ExtPack for 32-bit Linux which prevented to install that package on recent Linux distributions
• Solaris hosts: fixed a bug which prevented to install ExtPacks at all
• Linux/Solaris hosts: fixed the changelog in VirtualBox.chm (4.0 Beta 1 regression)
• Audio/HDA: fixed issue with Ubuntu 10.10 guests and OpenSolaris guests
• Audio/HDA: fixed choppy sound of Windows guests
• GUI: fixed display of the file shortcuts on some older Window Manager on X11
• 3D support: fixed XPDM Windows Explorer crashes on Windows Vista/Win7 guests
• 3D support: fixed Direct3D 8/9 support on Windows XP guests
• Mouse: fixed mouse reporting which was not working for X11 guests with pre-4.0 Additions (4.0 Beta 1 regression)
• Settings: use forward slashes in paths to make settings files more portable between Windows & other platforms
• VBoxManage: show exact image format variant with VBoxManage showhdinfo
• VBoxHeadless: detect VBoxSVC crash and terminate the VM cleanly
• SATA: fixed DVD detection with Solaris guests
• Linux Additions: fixed compilation of the kernel modules with DKMS (4.0 Beta 1 regression)
• VMDK: fixed image corruption with async I/O (4.0 Beta 1 regression)
• VBoxManage: fixed image resizing and the associated help text
• OVA: fix wrong size writing for individual files greater 4GB (max. 8GB now)
• X11 guests: multi-monitor support for X.Org Server 1.3+

VirtualBox 4.0.0 Beta 1 released

Version 4.0.0 will be new major release. The following major new features were added:

• New settings/disk file layout for VM portability; see the manual for more information.
• Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) support; see the manual for more information.
• VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts
• Language bindings: uniform Java bindings for both local (COM/XPCOM) and remote (SOAP) invocation APIs
• Chipset: added support for the Intel ICH9 chipset with 3 PCI buses, PCI express and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI)
• Audio: Intel HD Audio is now available as guest hardware, for better support with modern guest operating systems (eg 64-bit Windows; bug #2785).
• GUI: redesigned user interface with guest window preview
• GUI: new display mode with downscaled guest display
• Resource control: added support for limiting a VM’s CPU time and IO bandwidth.
• Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images
• Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images
• Windows Additions: support for automatically updating the Guest Additions (requires installed Windows Guest Additions 4.0 or later)
• Guest Additions: support for copying files into the guest file system

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: Enable large page support by default on 64-bit hosts (applies to nested paging only)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when running Minix (VT-x only; bug #6557)
• GUI: the guest VM list is now sortable
• GUI: add the possibility to delete all harddisk attached to an VM, when this VM is deleted (bug #5511)
• GUI: built-in creation of desktop file shortcuts to start VMs on double click (bug #2322)
• GUI: add configuration dialog for port forwarding in NAT mode (bug #1657)
• GUI: show the guest window content on save and restore
• GUI: certain GUI warnings don’t stop the VM output anymore
• Settings: deleting a machine now automatically deletes all snapshots and saved states as well, it is no longer necessary to manually delete snapshots first; VBoxManage unregistervm –delete can do the same now
• Snapshots: added screenshots
• 3D support: allow use of CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH again (bug #6864)
• 3D support: fixed various clipping/visibility issues (bugs #5659, #5794, #5848, #6018, #6187, #6570)
• 3D support: guest application stack corruption when using glGetVertexAttrib[ifd]v (bug #7395)
• 2D Video acceleration: multi-monitor support
• VRDP: fixed rare crash in multimonitor configuration
• Display: fixed occasional guest resize crash
• NAT: port forwarding rules can be applied at runtime
• SATA: allow to attach CD/DVD-ROM drives including passthrough (bug #7058)
• Floppy: support readonly image files, taking this as the criteria for making the medium readonly (bug #5651)
• Audio: the DirectSound backend now allows VMs to be audible when another DirectSound application is active, including another VM (bug #5578)
• EFI: support for SATA disks and CDROMs
• BIOS: reduce the stack usage of the VESA BIOS function #4F01 (Quake fix)
• OVF/OVA: significant performance improvements during export and import
• OVF/OVA: creation of the manifest file on export is optional now
• OVF/OVA: allow overwriting the target disk format on import
• OVF/OVA: fixed export of VMs with iSCSI disks
• Storage: Apple DMG image support for the virtual CD/DVD (bug #6760)
• Linux host USB support: introduced a less invasive way of accessing raw USB devices (bugs #1093, #5345, #7759)
• Guest Additions: Shared Folders now can be marked as being auto-mounted on Windows, Linux and Solaris guests
• Linux Additions: Shared Folders now support symbolic links (bug #818)
• Linux Additions: combined 32-bit and 64-bit additions into one file
• Windows Additions: automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 is now able to handle renamed user accounts; added various bug fixes