XNA Framework 4.0 unsupported by Windows XP Guest on Linux Host

[Spiralgalaxy]

I was hoping that Vbox 6 would work with this. I knew that older versions of Vbox did not support it. I have been using VMware Player 12.1 for several years to achieve my requirement but that application is now too difficult for me to maintain through kernel changes and later versions of "Player" are no good to me for other reasons. So I went back to the latest VirtualBox and tried a couple of the graphics adapter settings and I have the Guest additions correctly installed etc.

The VM otherwise works fine and I can run "dxdiag" and see the spinning cube on the 3D tests so I know DirectX is working (well 8 & 9 are anyway - doesn't like 7). The "repair" option of the XNA installation program appears to work OK (installs DirectX 9.0c components) but the application wanting to use XNA will not start (it reports XNA is not fully supported).

The annoying thing is that the application I want to run is not a game and doesn't really need XNA for what it does but the program writers chose to use it anyway :-(

Can anyone help?

[Frank Batschulat (Oracle)]

regarding XNA:

​https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/dn629515(v=msdn.10)

​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA

"According to an email sent on 31 January 2013, XNA is no longer being developed,[6] and it is not supported under the new "Metro interface" layers of Windows 8 nor on the Windows RT platform."

Questions:

• What exactly fails and exactly how ?
• Reproducable test case for us to test this problem?
• What exactly do you expect to change?

[Spiralgalaxy]

Sorry for not checking back sooner. Thanks for responding anyway.

Re: "According to an email sent on 31 January 2013, XNA is no longer being developed,[6] and it is not supported under the new "Metro interface" layers of Windows 8 nor on the Windows RT platform" - surely one of the major reasons to use a VM is to run unsupported and legacy software in a safe environment? So what if it's unsupported? What difference does that make to my needs?

The program I want use is an older Windows version of mapping software from Anquet. I have a complete set of GB OS maps on my Virtual Hard Drive that I can't use because Vbox doesn't support the XNA framework and the Anquet software needs it.

What exactly fails and exactly how - the application wanting to use XNA will not start (it reports XNA is not fully supported)

Reproducable test case for us to test this problem? - Cannot supply as software is obsolete. However, XNA is a framework so any application requiring it would do.

What exactly do you expect to change? - I don't expect anything. It would just be nice if Vbox was able to do what VMWare can do. I can't use newer versions of VMWare because my hardware won't support it and I'm not clever enough to build an old version for my later openSUSE distribution.

I have an older Mint distribution on my machine that has a working older VM Player on it that does support XNA so I'll just have to boot that when I want to look at my maps. It's a pity that Vbox has never supported XNA framework for Windows guests. Others have wanted this as well, mostly for games I expect. It's all been overtaken by Mono now anyway.

[Spiralgalaxy]

Perhaps I should clarify that it is possible to install the XNA framework on the Windows XP guest and no error is reported - it is only when the program in question apparently tries to make use of the XNA framework that the message is shown that "XNA is not fully supported" - the message is a Windows message generated by the guest OS.

I see that VBox 6.1.2 has this change - Windows guest: Accelerate 2D video decoding (scaling and color space conversion) if the VM is configured to use VBoxSVGA with 3D enabled

I'm using 6.0 at the moment so maybe I'll give the latest version a go sometime and see if it works for me. I think that my program, through XNA, might be trying to use accelerated 2D graphics - maybe...