Blinking displays on Windows guests with DWM (10, Vista, 7, 8.x)

[gojul]

Hi,

I've remarked that since VirtualBox 5.0 (and further versions) any Windows guest with DWM has a very annoying blinking effect. It's very proeminent on Windows 10, 7 and Vista guest, much less on Windows 8 guests.

This problem appears especially once Firefox has been started in the guest, but also with Windows 10 start menu or if you start CCleaner in Vista with admin privileges. It is also much more likely to occur if you start the VM, then switch to another host window, and then switch back to the VM window.

Under Windows 10 you can also the problem when starting Age of Empires 3 in the guest.

Note that w/ VirtualBox 4.x such blinking problem did not appear.

Guests affected : Windows 10 x64, Windows 8.1 x32, Windows 7, Windows Vista, all with guest additions 5.1.2 installed. 256 MB of VRAM allocated to each VM. All updates installed to each VM.

Host : Debian GNU/Linux Jessie 8 stable with all updates installed, including backports (Kernel 4.6.74). Arch AMD64 NVidia binary driver 367.27 (but actually the issue also appeared with older versions of the driver incl. 352.xx) Intel Core i7 4790 (not overclocked) 32 GB system RAM NVidia GeForce GTX 1070 (but the issue also occured when I have a GTX 970)

[Frank Mehnert]

Please attach a VBox.log file for such a VM session. I guess you have 3D enabled for this VM? Any change if you disable 3D?

[gojul]

Hi,

I have 3D enabled. Display becomes stable again if I disable 3D, but it is not possible on Windows 10 and 8.1.

Attached logs of a Windows 8.1 VM where the issue occured.

[gojul]

I noticed the following interesting stuff in logs :

00:00:56.467587 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpD3DCAPS9: *****Start Dumping D3DCAPS9:*******
00:00:56.467626 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpD3DCAPS9: WoW64 flag(0)
00:00:56.467655 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00020000, 0xe00a0000,
00:00:56.467681 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000320, 0x80000001, 0x00000003, 0x0019aff1,
00:00:56.467702 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x000e6ff2, 0x077363b1, 0x000000ff, 0x00003fff,
00:00:56.467737 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x000023ff, 0x000000ff, 0x00084208, 0x0001eccd,
00:00:56.467770 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x07030700, 0x07030700, 0x03030300, 0x0000003f,
00:00:56.467797 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x0000003f, 0x0000001f, 0x00008000, 0x00008000,
00:00:56.467817 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00004000, 0x00008000, 0x00008000, 0x00000010,
00:00:56.467836 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x501502f9, 0xc6000000, 0xc6000000, 0x46000000,
00:00:56.467855 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x46000000, 0x00000000, 0x000001ff, 0x00100008,
00:00:56.467882 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x03feffff, 0x00000008, 0x00000008, 0x0000013b,
00:00:56.467901 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000008, 0x00000008, 0x00000001, 0x00000000,
00:00:56.467920 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x44ffe000, 0x000fffff, 0x000fffff, 0x00000010,
00:00:56.467939 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000400, 0xfffe0300, 0x00000100, 0xffff0300,
00:00:56.467957 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x41000000, 0x00000051, 0x00000000, 0x00000000,
00:00:56.467976 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000001, 0x0000030f,
00:00:56.467994 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000004, 0x03000300, 0x00000001, 0x00000018,
00:00:56.468012 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000020, 0x00000004, 0x0000001f, 0x00000018,
00:00:56.468031 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000020, 0x00000004, 0x00000200, 0x01000100,
00:00:56.468049 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x0000ffff, 0x0000ffff, 0x00008000, 0x00008000,
00:00:56.468070 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpD3DCAPS9: *****End Dumping D3DCAPS9**********

[gojul]

Hi,

Looks like bug is still there w/ 5.1.4, but seems to be less noticeable (less blinks, even though they're still present)

The guest additions seem to have an impact there as if we are w/ 5.1.4 and GA 5.1.2 it is blinking much more.

[gojul]

Issue still there w/ 5.1.6 but it looks like things are getting better with newer releases.

[gojul]

Situation has worsened with 5.1.8. Could you please fix it, notably because 3D support is unavoidable for W8 and W10 guests ?

[gojul]

Hi,

Problem still present w/ 5.1.10

[gojul]

Still present in 5.1.12

[gojul]

Still present in 5.1.14

[gojul]

Still present in 5.1.16

[gojul]

Still present in 5.1.18

[Frank Mehnert]

Btw, the question from comment:1 was not related to the installation options of the Guest Additions but it was related to the VM settings. You should be very well able to disable 3D for your guests and Windows 8 / 10 will still work.

[gojul]

Hi,

If I disable 3D acceleration in Windows 8 / 10 display becomes sluggish but the issue disappears, even after half an hour.

[gojul]

Same w/ 5.1.20

[gojul]

Same w/ 5.1.22

[gojul]

Hi,

Applying the fix provided here does the job : ​https://techblog.devlat.eu/2017/04/07/screen-flickering-in-virtualbox-with-3d-enabled/

It would be nice you finally mainline it.

[Socratis]

Replying to gojul:

It would be nice you finally mainline it.

If you read the whole article and especially ticket #13653 (2.5 years ago) that it points to, you'd know that this is impossible at the moment. Mainly because that simple change:

- #define CR_RENDER_FORCE_PRESENT_MAIN_THREAD

affects a paying customer. And not to say that the only focus is the money, but mainly the lack of enough developers to handle it. They asked for help... Nobody offered. Even Alexey (Technologov) who spent an amazing amount and effort in finding the original "patch", hasn't been able to solve it.

Just stating the obvious...

[gojul]

Okay in that case a possible fix would consist in allowing the workaround through a given environment variable or some checkbox, disabled by default.

I know it is not as clean as a proper fix for your paying customer (yup I've come accross this but then no more news from what I read in the article) but at least it would solve the issue for most of us.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Would anyone out there volunteer to provide a variant of the "fix" which performs the check at runtime (instead of proposing a compile time tweak)? It doesn't really matter what way of runtime check is used, as long it correctly triggers the two different code paths. The VirtualBox team is working on other stuff at the moment, and fixing the 'old' 3D code (which we consider in general unfixable, aiming to replace it wholesale) is so low priority that I can't see it happening in the time frame for which the people running into this issue are hoping.

[Socratis]

klaus, I suspect that you'll have a wider audience if you post this on #13653, since that's where the fix originated and that's where the most tech savvy people are.

[bronek]

Got the same error as in comment 3, using the latest VirtualBox 5.2.18 on Ubuntu.

VirtualBox VM 5.2.18_Ubuntu r123745 linux.amd64 (Aug 17 2018 15:02:22) release log
00:00:00.841365 Log opened 2018-12-11T21:57:43.270047000Z
00:00:00.841366 Build Type: release
00:00:00.841372 OS Product: Linux
00:00:00.841374 OS Release: 4.18.0-12-generic
00:00:00.841376 OS Version: #13-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 14 15:17:05 UTC 2018
...
00:00:12.159992 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VENDOR:   nouveau
00:00:12.160020 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_RENDERER: NV132
00:00:12.160026 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VERSION:  3.1 Mesa 18.2.2
00:00:12.225444 NAT: resolv.conf: nameserver 127.0.0.53
00:00:12.225475 NAT: DNS server 127.0.0.53 registration detected, switching to the DNS proxy
00:00:12.225481 NAT: DNS#0: 127.0.0.53
00:00:12.225487 NAT: DHCP offered IP address 10.0.2.15
00:00:12.231793 NAT: IPv6 not supported
00:00:12.241069 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpD3DCAPS9: *****Start Dumping D3DCAPS9:*******
00:00:12.241147 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpD3DCAPS9: WoW64 flag(0)
00:00:12.241202 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00020000, 0xe00a0000,
00:00:12.241237 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000320, 0x80000001, 0x00000003, 0x0019aff1,
00:00:12.241280 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x000e6ff2, 0x077363b1, 0x000000ff, 0x00003fff,
00:00:12.241330 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x000023ff, 0x000000ff, 0x00084208, 0x0001eccd,
00:00:12.241367 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x07030700, 0x07030700, 0x03030300, 0x0000003f,
00:00:12.241400 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x0000003f, 0x0000001f, 0x00004000, 0x00004000,
00:00:12.241518 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000800, 0x00008000, 0x00004000, 0x00000010,
00:00:12.241579 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x501502f9, 0xc6000000, 0xc6000000, 0x46000000,
00:00:12.241631 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x46000000, 0x00000000, 0x000001ff, 0x00100008,
00:00:12.241670 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x03feffff, 0x00000008, 0x00000008, 0x0000013b,
00:00:12.241709 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000008, 0x00000008, 0x00000001, 0x00000000,
00:00:12.241759 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x427c0000, 0x000fffff, 0x000fffff, 0x00000010,
00:00:12.241800 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000400, 0xfffe0300, 0x00000100, 0xffff0300,
00:00:12.241851 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x41000000, 0x00000051, 0x00000000, 0x00000000,
00:00:12.241890 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000001, 0x0000030f,
00:00:12.241936 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000004, 0x03000300, 0x00000001, 0x00000018,
00:00:12.241980 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000020, 0x00000004, 0x0000001f, 0x00000018,
00:00:12.242034 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x00000020, 0x00000004, 0x00000200, 0x01000100,
00:00:12.242072 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpDword: 0x0000ffff, 0x0000ffff, 0x00004000, 0x00004000,
00:00:12.242126 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxUmdDumpD3DCAPS9: *****End Dumping D3DCAPS9**********
00:00:12.630604 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VENDOR:   nouveau
00:00:12.630632 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_RENDERER: NV132
00:00:12.630638 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VERSION:  3.1 Mesa 18.2.2

But in my case, Windows 10 during login process just stops and VirtualBox reports it as Aborted.

I've 2D and 3D acceleration enabled.

[Socratis]

Replying to bronek:

VirtualBox VM 5.2.18_Ubuntu r123745 linux.amd64 (Aug 17 2018 15:02:22) release log

It looks like you're using the distro's fork version of VirtualBox. You can either ask in their forums for help, or completely remove/uninstall/delete/purge their version and install the official version from the Linux Downloads section of VirtualBox.

[hervinhio]

Vbox is blinking on Windows 10.

[hervinhio]

Facing this issue on version 6.0.6 r130049

• attachment https://www.virtualbox.org/attachment/ticket/15758/VBOX-15758.rar