Windows XP Guest Crashes on Gutsy Host - Clipboard Error

[David Collins]

The Windows XP host aborts regularly while it is not being used with log error - 'vboxClipboardConvertUtf8: clipboard conversion failed. RTUtf16ToUtf8Ex() returned VERR_INVALID_UTF16_ENCODING. Abandoning.' It seems to crash when I am performing clipboard operations elsewhere in my Xubuntu session.

The host is running on Xubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

The last time it crashed was while I was pasting the text of the above error from a terminal window into google (using Firefox) - the paste into the google search field failed, and at the same time the Virtual Box Windows XP session crashed. After it had crashed, I then tried pasting the same message into the google search field a second time, and it worked.

I think it shouldn't be hard for you to replicate this problem, yourself. (I might be off-line for the next 2 weeks.)

[David Collins]

To clarify - the pasting I describe above is NOT in the Windows XP session - it is elsewhere in my Xubuntu session.

FYI, In the Windows XP session, I am running a VPN client and then RDPing to a Windows XP PC via the VPN tunnel (using mstsc.exe). No other software is running on the guest system.

[Michael Thayer]

Sorry to have taken a while to respond. Can you try out the updated clipboard library which I will upload and see if you can still reproduce the issue? Just replace the equivalent file in your own VirtualBox installation (making a backup first of course).

[Michael Thayer]

Updated clipboard handler for VirtualBox 1.5.4, for 32bit Linux hosts with glibc 2.4 or newer (built on Kubuntu 7.10)

[David Collins]

Thanks, Michael.

The updated clipboard library improves things substantially.

Now, it seems that regardless of what I do the Windows XP guest does not crash - and that is important.

There are 2 cases that give different results:

1. Run Windows XP guest (without running mstsc.exe - ie. RDP client)

Copying to clipboard and pasting from clipboard works fine - both from guest to host, and host to guest.

2. Run Windows XP guest (running mstsc.exe - ie. Microsoft RDP client)

I think that mstsc.exe does some special stuff with the clipboard - which seems to stuff things up. I can't copy to clipboard successfully on the xubuntu host - when I copy then paste (both of these on xubuntu host), I end up with corrupt characters. I can copy into the clipboard on the Windows XP guest, though, and then paste into somewhere on the xubuntu host. ie. host->guest - No good, guest->host - OK

Regards, Tybion

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Try again with 1.6.0 and report back if it's still relevant. Thanks.