Changelog for VirtualBox 4.2

This page lists all changes of the VirtualBox 4.2 releases.
All branches: 7.1 · 7.0 · 6.1 · 6.0 · 5.2 · 5.1 · 5.0 · 4.3 · 4.2 · 4.1 · 4.0

VirtualBox 4.2.x is no longer supported!

VirtualBox 4.2.36 (released 2015-11-11)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• several fixes

VirtualBox 4.2.34 (released 2015-10-20)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• several fixes
• Linux hosts: Linux 4.2 fix
• Linux hosts: Linux 4.3 compile fixes
• Windows hosts: hardening fixes
• Linux Additions: Linux 4.2 fixes (bug #14227)

VirtualBox 4.2.32 (released 2015-07-10)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• Storage: fixed a crash when taking snapshots (4.2.30 regression)
• ExtPack: don't fail if the TMP directory contains non-latin1 characters (bug #14159)
• Main: implemented dedicated event processing queue
• Linux hosts: fixed a bug which made the netfilter driver ignore certain events (bug #12264)

VirtualBox 4.2.30 (released 2015-05-19)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VRDP: fixed incompatibility with rdesktop 1.8.3
• Floppy: several fixes
• Storage: fixed hang during power off if the iSCSI over internal network feature is used
• BIOS: fixed the returned size value of the VBE 2.0 PMI function 0Ah (4.2.0 regression; bug #14096)
• Mac OS X hosts: don't panic on hosts with activated SMAP (Broadwell and later; bug #13951)
• Linux hosts: fixes for activated SMAP (Broadwell and later, bug #13820)
• Linux hosts / guests: Linux 4.0 fixes (bug #13835)
• Solaris hosts: fixed using of VNIC templates with Crossbow based bridged networking to be compatible with vanity interface names
• Windows hosts: more hardening fixes (e.g. bugs #14051, #14052)

VirtualBox 4.2.28 (released 2015-01-17)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: fixed a potential misbehavior after restoring the A20 state from a saved state
• VRDP: fixed a rare crash when using remote audio input
• Floppy: fixed read errors and guest memory corruption when running under control of QEMM
• Storage: fixed data corruption when resizing VHD images under certain circumstances
• NAT: fixed handling of the RFC 1533 DHCP PAD option
• X11 hosts: Made the extra key on Brazilian Thinkpads work (bug #8745)
• X11 hosts: fixed a problem of input focus cycles and immediately released key presses in full screen mode (bug #13238)
• Linux guests: fix a crash in gnome-session (bug #13335)
• Linux Additions: fixed a potential use-after-free when unloading the VBoxGuest module
• Linux Additions: Linux 3.19 fixes (#13741)
• X11 Additions: support X.Org Server 1.15 (bug #12623)
• X11 guests: Add support for X.Org Server 1.16 (bug #13207)
• X11 guests: fixed a wrong parameter in the video driver which caused problems with full-screen X11 clients (bug #2748)
• X11 guests: fix a bug handling video driver display properties which prevented GNOME Shell on Fedora 21 from starting

VirtualBox 4.2.26 (released 2014-07-15)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: improve MSI handling under rare circumstances (only relevant for the ICH9 chipset)
• VBoxManage: fixed typo in showvminfo --machinereadable (bug #13176)
• HGCM: fixed a problem with saved states which could cause several guest misbehavior after a VM was started from a saved state
• NAT: fixed inbound half-close (bug #13116)
• NAT: fixed generation of malformed ICMP error datagrams (4.2.24 regression)
• Storage: fixed a crash when trying to open an inaccessible QED or QCOW image (bug #12613)
• API: properly detect the Windows 8.1 guest OS type (bug #13090)
• VRDP: fixed a potential crash on client disconnect (bug #12858)
• OVF/OVA: Fixed wrong checksum calculation (should be unsigned) and verification
• ExtPack: cleanup of dangling uninstallation directories
• Linux hosts: fixed dependency of boot script on older Debian systems (bug #12262)
• Linux hosts / guests: compile fix for EL7 (bug #12638)
• Linux Additions: Linux 3.16 fixes (bug #13123)

VirtualBox 4.2.24 (released 2014-03-13)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: experimental HID LEDs synchronization for Windows and Mac OS X hosts: fixed keyboard re-synchronization if the feature is disabled (as done by default; bug #12758)
• GUI: experimental HID LEDs synchronization for Windows hosts, see the manual for more information
• GUI: make sure that a minimized guest (using mini toolbar in full screen / seamless mode) keeps the minimized state (bug #12199)
• AHCI: ejecting a CD/DVD medium failed under certain conditions
• NAT: transparent handling of host sleep/resume and network configuration changes if the dnsproxy is enabled or if the hostresolver is used (bug #12441)
• NAT: fixed crash and misbehaviour under some circumstances with ICMP packets having TTL=1
• 3D support: several fixes, multiscreen fixes (e.g. bug #9124)
• API: fix crashes in Java API clients using the XPCOM binding, happened with output parameters only (bug #11232)
• API: fixed guest misbehavior under certain conditions if a storage medium was attached or removed at VM runtime
• VBoxSVC: documented the handling of host power management events (see the manual for more information) and added an extradata item for configuring the handling of the battery-low event (bug #9925)
• VBoxSVC: fixed a bug which could trigger a crash if a VM snapshot was restored the second time and the VM has associated bandwidth groups (bug #12569)
• VBoxSVC: fix segmentation fault on Linux hosts if a very long path exists under /dev (bug #12760)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed issue when the application icon was frozen in the dock if the bridging interface was not connected to a network (bug #12241)
• Linux hosts / guests: don't warn in kernel log if memory allocation fails (bug #11171)
• Windows hosts / guests: fixed setting and using a guest user's process environment variables (relevant for Guest Control)
• Solaris hosts: fixed autostart SMF script (bug #11720)
• Windows Additions: several bugfixes for the credential provider auto-logon module
• Linux / Solaris Additions: don't automount a shared folder which is already mounted

VirtualBox 4.2.22 (released 2014-01-10)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: Mac OS X host: introduced extradata option "GUI/HidLedsSync" aimed to enable HID LEDs synchronization (feature disabled by default)
• GUI: Mac OS X host: fixed issue on MacBook Air/Pro hosts when GUI might freeze in attempt to synchronize HID LEDs
• Main: always expose the DMI memory information to Windows 2012 guests (bug #12017)
• HGCM: fixed crashes under certain conditions
• Storage: fix for BLKCACHE_IOERR runtime errors under rare circumstances (bug #11030)
• AHCI: fixed a bug which resulted in Windows XP guest hangs if a SATA CDROM is attached (bug #12417)
• AHCI: fixed a Guru Meditation under certain conditions
• E1000: if the cable was disconnected before the guest initialized the device, the link status was not properly set to 'down' after the initialization completed despite the fact that there was no connection
• 3D support: fixed offset of guest 3D image elements (Mac OS X Retina hosts only; bug #11021)
• 3D support: many fixes
• Linux Additions: support Enterprise Linux 6.5 kernels (bug #12505)
• Windows Additions: fixed guest crashes in in Shared Folders service under certain conditions

VirtualBox 4.2.20 (released 2013-11-28)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: always report recommended resolutions for all monitors (not always done since 4.2.12)
• GUI: make sure the assigned license and description are attached to the exported appliance
• GUI: the OS X hot corners were not accessible while a VirtualBox VM is running (Mac OS X hosts only; bug #4139)
• NAT: don't run into an infinite loop in case the host cannot access any DNS server (bug #12300)
• NAT: don't re-connect the cable if the DNS information changes and the cable was disconnected before (bug #12225)
• Main: properly save the passthrough flag for DVD drives without an attached medium
• Keyboard: fixed a VM crash if a VM was resumed from a saved state where at least one key was pressed (bug #11289)
• 2D Video acceleration: fix crashes on presentation mode switches (bug #9194)
• Storage: fixed errors with snapshots when using QCOW or QED disk images (bug #12144)
• Storage: fix for newer Linux kernels not detecting a hard disk as SSD when using the IDE or SATA controller (bug #12025)
• Storage: fixed detection of CD/DVD media when switching from an empty to a host drive with passthrough enabled
• Snapshots: fixed a bug which could result in lost medium attachments (4.2.18 regression, bug #11750)
• Shared Clipboard: fixed potential SEGFAULT when working with UTF8 and UTF16 content (Mac OS X hosts only)
• OVF: fixed import logic for OVF appliances containing multiple VMs
• Extpack Installer: make it work if the file is located in a folder with special characters
• SDK: extended the functionality coverage for the C bindings
• API: block the removal of the current snapshot if it has child snapshots (only relevant for VMs without snapshottable hard disks, their presence always prevented removal), which resulted in VM config corruption
• API: mark VM configs with snapshots but without current snapshot as inaccessible, as this combination is nonsense
• API: fixed information for some automatically generated events (only with XPCOM, Windows host was not affected), which caused errors when getting some of the attributes over the webservice (bug #12379)
• Mac OS X hosts: support for Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
• Mac OS X hosts: properly sign the kernel extensions for Mavericks hosts (bug #12256)
• Mac OS X hosts: use a launchd script instead of the deprecated StartupItem mechanism (bug #8940)
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed a bug where the VirtualBox dock icon was not properly removed from the dock after a VM terminated preventing Mavericks hosts from shutting (bug #12241)
• Linux Additions: Linux 3.13 compile fix (bug #12358)
• Linux Additions: Linux 3.12 compile fix (bug #12083)
• Linux Additions: Linux 3.11 fix for shared folders (bugs #11946, #12128)
• Linux Additions: compile fix for SLES11 SP3
• Linux Additions: correctly set umask before installing (bug #12166)
• Linux Additions: build the vboxvideo kernel module correctly on OL/RHEL 6.1 guests (bug #11996)
• Linux Additions: make 3D work on Slackware 14.1 (bug #12320 comments 3 and 4)
• Windows Additions: fixed memory leak caused by WTSQuerySessionInformation() on Windows 2000 guests (bug #12072)
• Windows Additions: multimonitor resize fixes
• X11 Additions/3D: fix freezes starting 3D desktop (bug #11503, thank you Sam Spilsbury)
• Guest additions/3D: fix an occasional dead-lock (bug #12319)

VirtualBox 4.2.18 (released 2013-09-06)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: properly handle NMIs on Linux hosts with X2APIC enabled
• VMM: fixed potential crashes with 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts (bug #11979)
• GUI / seamless: properly handle mouse wheel scroll events
• GUI, VBoxManage: when unregistering a VM, also unregister the hard disk images which are used exclusively (bug #10311)
• GUI: prevent crashes under certain conditions on X11 hosts
• 3D: multiscreen fixes (incorrect mouse position, flickers)
• 3D Support: several fixes for the Windows WDDM video driver (multiscreen, seamless)
• Snapshots: made live snapshots work again (bug #9255)
• Teleportation: made it work again (bug #9455)
• VBoxManage: on snapshot take, --pause is default and --live is for doing live snapshots
• VBoxSVC: don't crash on systems with many VLAN interfaces (Solaris hosts only)
• Network: after the host resumes from suspend, disconnect and reconnect the virtual network cables to force renewing the DHCP leases for the guests. So far only Mac OS X hosts and Windows hosts (bug #10063).
• NAT: on name server changes force a reconnect of the virtual network cable to notify the guest (Mac OS X hosts only)
• Mac OS X installer: keep previously installed Extension Packs on VirtualBox upgrade
• Linux hosts / guests: Linux 3.11 fixes (bug #12001)
• Solaris hosts: fixed a potential kernel panic caused due to unexpected preemption due to logging.
• Windows hosts: fixed an issue with USB2 devices being inaccessible when plugged into USB3 ports.
• Linux Additions: added PCI device identifier to vboxvideo.ko fixing DRI initialization under certain conditions (bug #11957)
• Linux Additions: fixed udev detection in the init script with Linux 3.x kernels

VirtualBox 4.2.16 (released 2013-07-04)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• OVF/OVA: don't crash on import if no manifest is used (4.2.14 regression; bug #11895)
• GUI: do not restore the current snapshot if we power-off after a Guru Mediation
• Storage: fixed a crash when hotplugging an empty DVD drive to the VM
• Storage: fixed a crash when a guest read from a DVD drive attached to the SATA controller under certain circumstances
• EFI: don't fail with 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts (bug #11456)
• Autostart: fixed VM startup on OS X
• Windows hosts: native Windows 8 controls
• Windows hosts: restore native style on Vista 32
• Windows hosts / guests: Windows 8.1 adaptions (bug #11899)
• Mac OS X hosts: after removing VirtualBox with !VirtualBox_Uninstall.tool, remove it from the pkgutil --pkgs list as well

VirtualBox 4.2.14 (released 2013-06-21)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: another TLB invalidation fix for non-present pages
• VMM: fixed a performance regression (4.2.8 regression; bug #11674)
• GUI: fixed a crash on shutdown
• GUI: prevent stuck keys under certain conditions on Windows hosts (bugs #2613, #6171)
• VRDP: fixed a rare crash on the guest screen resize
• VRDP: allow to change VRDP parameters (including enabling/disabling the server) if the VM is paused
• USB: fixed passing through devices on Mac OS X host to a VM with 2 or more virtual CPUs (bug #7462)
• USB: fixed hang during isochronous transfer with certain devices (4.1 regression; Windows hosts only; bug #11839)
• USB: properly handle orphaned URBs (bug #11207)
• BIOS: fixed function for returning the PCI interrupt routing table (fixes NetWare 6.x guests)
• BIOS: don't use the ENTER / LEAVE instructions in the BIOS as these don't work in the real mode as set up by certain guests (e.g. Plan 9 and QNX 4)
• DMI: allow to configure DmiChassisType (bug #11832)
• Storage: fixed lost writes if iSCSI is used with snapshots and asynchronous I/O (bug #11479)
• Storage: fixed accessing certain VHDX images created by Windows 8 (bug #11502)
• Storage: fixed hang when creating a snapshot using Parallels disk images (bug #9617)
• 3D: seamless + 3D fixes (bug #11723)
• 3D: version 4.2.12 was not able to read saved states of older versions under certain conditions (bug #11718)
• Main/Properties: don't create a guest property for non-running VMs if the property does not exist and is about to be removed (bug #11765)
• Main/Properties: don't forget to make new guest properties persistent after the VM was terminated (bug #11719)
• Main/Display: don't lose seamless regions during screen resize
• Main/OVF: don't crash during import if the client forgot to call Appliance::interpret() (bug #10845)
• Main/OVF: don't create invalid appliances by stripping the file name if the VM name is very long (bug #11814)
• Main/OVF: don't fail if the appliance contains multiple file references (bug #10689)
• Main/Metrics: fixed Solaris file descriptor leak
• Settings: limit depth of snapshot tree to 250 levels, as more will lead to decreased performance and may trigger crashes
• VBoxManage: fixed setting the parent UUID on diff images using sethdparentuuid
• Linux hosts: work around for not crashing as a result of automatic NUMA balancing which was introduced in Linux 3.8 (bug #11610)
• Windows installer: force the installation of the public certificate in background (i.e. completely prevent user interaction) if the --silent command line option is specified
• Windows Additions: fixed problems with partial install in the unattended case
• Windows Additions: fixed display glitch with the Start button in seamless mode for some themes
• Windows Additions: Seamless mode and auto-resize fixes
• Windows Additions: fixed trying to to retrieve new auto-logon credentials if current ones were not processed yet
• Windows Additions installer: added the /with_wddm switch to select the experimental WDDM driver by default
• Linux Additions: fixed setting own timed out and aborted texts in information label of the lightdm greeter
• Linux Additions: fixed compilation against Linux 3.2.0 Ubuntu kernels (4.2.12 regression as a side effect of the Debian kernel build fix; bug #11709)
• X11 Additions: reduced the CPU load of VBoxClient in drag'and'drop mode
• OS/2 Additions: made the mouse wheel work (bug #6793)
• Guest Additions: fixed problems copying and pasting between two guests on an X11 host (bug #11792)

VirtualBox 4.2.12 (released 2013-04-12)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: fixed a Guru Meditation on putting Linux guest CPU online if nested paging is disabled
• VMM: invalidate TLB entries even for non-present pages
• GUI: Multi-screen support: fixed a crash on visual-mode change
• GUI: Multi-screen support: disabled guest-screens should now remain disabled on visual-mode change
• GUI: Multi-screen support: handle host/guest screen plugging/unplugging in different visual-modes
• GUI: Multi-screen support: seamless mode: fixed a bug when empty seamless screens were represented by fullscreen windows
• GUI: Multi-screen support: each machine window in multi-screen configuration should have correct menu-bar now (Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: Multi-screen support: machine window View menu should have correct content in seamless/fullscreen mode now (Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: VM manager: vertical scroll-bars should be now updated on content/window resize
• GUI: VM settings: fixed crash on machine state-change event
• GUI: don't show warnings about enabled or disabled mouse integration if the VM was restored from a saved state
• Virtio-net: properly announce that the guest has to handle partial TCP checksums (bug #9380)
• Storage: Fixed incorrect alignment of VDI images causing disk size changes when using snapshots (bug #11597)
• Audio: fixed broken ALSA & PulseAudio on some Linux hosts due to invalid symbol resolution (bug #11615)
• PS/2 keyboard: re-apply keyboard repeat delay and rate after a VM was restored from a saved state (bug #10933)
• BIOS: updated DMI processor information table (type 4): corrected L1 & L2 cache table handles
• Timekeeping: fix several issues which can lead to incorrect time, Solaris guests sporadically showed time going briefly back to Jan 1 1970
• Main/Metrics: disk metrics are collected properly when software RAID, symbolic links or rootfs are used on Linux hosts
• VBoxManage: don't stay paused after a snapshot was created and the VM was running before
• VBoxManage: introduced controlvm nicpromisc (bug #11423)
• VBoxManage: don't crash on controlvm guestmemoryballoon if the VM isn't running (bug #11639)
• VBoxHeadless: don't filter guest property events as this would affect all clients (bug #11644)
• Guest control: prevent double CR in the output generated by guest commands and do NLS conversion
• Linux hosts / guests: fixed build errors on Linux 3.5 and newer kernels if the CONFIG_UIDGID_STRICT_TYPE_CHECKS config option is enabled (bug #11664)
• Linux Additions: handle fall-back to VESA driver on RedHat-based guests if vboxvideo cannot be loaded
• Linux Additions: RHEL/OEL/CentOS 6.4 compile fix (bug #11586)
• Linux Additions: Debian Linux kernel 3.2.0-4 (3.2.39) compile fix (bug #11634)
• Linux Additions: added auto-logon support for Linux guests using LightDM as the display manager
• Windows Additions: Support for multimonitor. Dynamic enable/disable of secondary virtual monitors. Support for XPDM/WDDM based guests
• X11 Additions: support X.Org Server 1.14 (bug #11609)

VirtualBox 4.2.10 (released 2013-03-15)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: fixed keyboard with XQuartz X server (bug #10664)
• Main/Display: fixed a crash with multi-monitors under certain conditions (Mac OS X hosts only)
• Main/Properties: fixed a crash under certain conditions, for example after wakeup from host hibernate (bug #11444)
• Settings: don't lose the internal network settings if they are not currently active
• Storage: another incompatibility fix for VHD differencing images with Hyper-V (bug #5990)
• VBoxManage: don't read beyond the end of the file specified with export --eulafile (bug #11528)
• Linux hosts / guests: Linux 3.9-rc0 compile fixes (bug #11529)
• Linux Additions: fixed two warnings in the shared folders guest kernel module (bug #11390)
• Linux Additions: don't crash VBoxService if libdbus is not available (bug #8638)
• Windows Additions: fixed upgrading MultiMedia Redirection (MMR) support

VirtualBox 4.2.8 (released 2013-02-27)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: fixed guest crash with huge amount of guest RAM on VT-x hosts (bug #11306)
• GUI: fixed a layout bug in the Mac OS X clone VM dialog (bug #10982)
• GUI: not all the translation tags were taken into account during the language switch (bug #11342)
• GUI: take guest screenshot dialog sometimes had no keyboard input available on Windows host
• Main/Machine: fix generation of spurious event for inaccessible VMs which triggered an endless event generation loop in cooperation with the GUI which became unresponsive (4.2.6 regression, bug #11323)
• Main/Display: fix for an access violation under certain conditions in multi-monitor configurations (bug #10539)
• Main/Metrics: network metrics are now collected for active (up) interfaces only, the state of an interface being evaluated when the associated metric is enabled via setupMetrics
• Snapshots: reduce the time for merging snapshots under certain conditions
• Storage: fixed data corruption after resizing a VDI image under certain circumstances (bug #11344)
• Storage: fixed non working online merging of snapshots (4.2.6 regression, bug #11359)
• Storage: fixed crash when connecting to certain QNAP iSCSI targets
• Storage: fixed incompatibility of VHD differencing images with Hyper-V (bug #5990)
• Bridged Networking: fixed TCP pseudo header checksum computation for IPv6 (bug #9380)
• 3D support: fix Battlefield 1942 game crashes (bug #11369)
• Settings: really sanitize the name of VM folders and settings file, the code was disabled before (bug #10549)
• Settings: allow to change VRDE settings for saved VMs
• VBoxManage: don't crash during screenshotpng if there is no display (bug #11363)
• Linux hosts: work around gcc bug 55940 which might lead to wrong kernel module code if gcc 4.7 is used to compile the 32-bit Linux host kernel (bug #11035)
• Linux hosts: fixed inconsistent lock state and deadlock warnings on module load and VM startup when CONFIG_PROVE_LOCKING is enabled (bug #11318)
• Linux hosts: made "]" key work again on Japanese keyboards
• Mac OS X hosts: don't crash the kernel during dtrace if the VBox kernel extensions are loaded (10.6 hosts only; bug #11273)
• Solaris / Mac OS X hosts: machine CPU load metrics now report 100% when all cores are fully utilized (used to be a single core)
• Solaris 11 host installer: wait for any services left over from a previous installation to be terminated to avoid confusing SMF.
• Guest Additions: don't block signals for processes executed via guest control
• Guest Additions: fixed a small memory leak in VBoxService (bug #10970)
• Windows Additions: fixed shared folder issue with large reads/writes on 64 bit Windows guests (bug #11115)
• Linux Additions: Linux 3.8 compile fixes (bug #11036)
• X11 Additions: fixed blocked SIGALRM in 3D desktop sessions (bug #10987)
• X11 Additions: fixed an unresolved reference in vboxvideo_drv for X.org 6.8 guests and before (e.g. RHEL4; 4.2.0 regression)
• X11 Additions: fixed screen automatic resizing for guests with X.org 1.3 or older (4.2.0 regression)

VirtualBox 4.2.6 (released 2012-12-19)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: don't inject stale VT-x events to prevent crashes after VM reset (bug #11256)
• VMM: workaround for buggy BIOSes which enable MONITOR only for certain CPUs (bugs #9460, #10686)
• GUI: fixed trimming of anti-aliased text in details-view element headers (4.2.0 regression)
• GUI: fixed create-settings-file-alias functionality on Mac hosts (4.2.0 regression)
• GUI: fixed take-guest-screenshot functionality on Windows hosts (bug #11095)
• GUI: several minor fixes, including palette fixes (bug #11191)
• GUI: fixed Windows 2012 OS type (bug #11206)
• GUI: allow to terminate the VM even if VBoxSVC crashed
• API: fixed cancelling of snapshots, previously this could lead to inconsistent VM configs (bug #6877)
• API: fixed identifying disk images by UUID (bug #11209)
• 3D Support: several fixes
• VRDP: fixed occasional crash with external authentication (bug #11156)
• VGA: fix for double scan text modes
• USB: fixed invalid pending request count at the time of service of DEVICE POWER requests (Windows hosts only; bugs #10021, #11056)
• USB keyboard: Korean keyboard workaround (bug #11150)
• Storage: fixed hang with QCOW images and asynchronous I/O enabled
• Storage: fixed hang with newer VHD images (bug #11279)
• Storage: actually write the non-rotational flag to the VM settings (4.2.0 regression)
• Virtio-net: fixed the problem with network statistics counters in Session Information dialog (GUI)
• Metrics: introduced network rate and disk usage metrics
• Metrics: fixed a crash under certain conditions on Solaris hosts
• BIOS: fix for El Torito
• Shared Folders: if the host folder of a shared folder mapping does not exist, keep it active but mark it as invalid to prevent inconsistent saved states (bug #11147)
• VBoxManage: fixed converting disks from raw images
• VBoxManage: show snapshot description in the VM or snapshot information
• VBoxManage: make implicit opening of media consistent in all places dealing with media
• VBoxManage: the iSCSI initiator name was not stored in the settings file when doing storageattach (bug #11212)
• VBoxManage: metrics collect now properly handles 'CPU/MHz' and 'Net/*/LinkSpeed' metrics
• VBoxManage: changing the image UUID or parent UUID as part of storageattach works now in all safe cases
• VBoxManage: introduced storageattach --medium additions as a shortcut to mount the additions image (bug #11165)
• OVF: fixed importing OVF files cerated by recent VMware products (bug #10905)
• Linux hosts / Bridged Networking: fixed the problem with leaking connections in conntrack (bug #11178)
• Linux Additions: added support for ConsoleKit sessions in the vminfo service of VBoxService
• Linux Additions: don't crash during remount under certain conditions (bug #11291)
• Linux/Solaris Additions: fixed guest memory metrics collection
• Solaris hosts: added a dependency to ensure that the user directories are reachable when starting VBox services
• Windows host installer: integrated user-contributed translations, thanks to all contributors!
• Windows Additions: fixed auto-logon installation for Windows 8
• Windows Additions: don't fail if the shared folders host service is not available
• Windows Additions: fixed Guest Additions startup on Windows 2000 guests (bug #11253)
• Windows Additions: auto-resize fixes for Windows 8 guests

VirtualBox 4.2.4 (released 2012-10-26)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• GUI: fixed validation warning on global settings / proxy page (4.2.2 regression, bug #11089)
• GUI: fixed crash with multiple guest screens on certain conditions (OS X hosts only)
• VBoxBalloonCtrl: fixed command line argument handling of ballooning module
• VRDP: fixed occasional crash during a video playback in the guest (bug #11082)
• BIOS: fixed broken DMI information (4.2 regression)
• BIOS: workaround for booting from Windows 2000 floppy disks
• EFI: fixed video mode selection loss on VM reboot (#10983)
• Parallel: fixed parallel port printing failure/ paper queue empty error (Windows hosts only)
• NAT: fixed crash on alias-less DNS responses when host-resolver is used
• Storage: fixed hang under rare circumstances

VirtualBox 4.2.2 (released 2012-10-18)

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: adapted to changes in Mac OS X 10.8.2 (bug #10965)
• GUI: restored VM item tool-tip functionality (4.2 regression)
• GUI: added group item tool-tip functionality
• GUI: fixed handling of the .ova/.ovf file name association (4.2 regression)
• GUI: it was not possible to change any setting before the first VM was created (bug #10928)
• GUI: disable grouping action if all the selected items are full children list of the same group already
• GUI: added menu for runtime drag-and-drop option change
• GUI: cleanup shared-clipboard menu on visual-mode change
• GUI: make sure VM receives keyboard focus on entering fullscreen-mode on Win host (bug #11051)
• GUI: disable proxy authentication for security reasons
• 3D Support: DrawIndexedPrimitiveUP implementation fixes for the Windows WDDM video driver (bug #10929)
• Storage: fixed a release assertion in the AHCI emulation when requests where canceled with asynchronous I/O disabled
• Storage: fixed a hang during VM reset under certain circumstances (bug #10898)
• NAT: fixed a crash under rare circumstances (Windows hosts only; bug #10128)
• NAT: automatically use the host resolver if the host name server is set to some unusual loopback value (bug #10864)
• E1000: fixed a VirtualBox crash during intensive network transfers (4.2 regression; bugs #10936, #10969, #10980)
• ICH9: fixed PCI bridge initialization
• USB mouse: ensure that the last mouse event doesn't get lost if no URBs are available
• BIOS: certain legacy guests (e.g. Windows 95) didn't find the boot device after a warm reboot
• BIOS: don't trash the palette in text modes when setting the border color
• EFI: fixed OS X guest autoboot (4.2 regression)
• VBoxManage: fixed output of showvminfo --machinereadable (bug #10973)
• VBoxManage: fixed parsing of storageattach --discard (bug #11023)
• VBoxManage: fixed wrong output of the HPET setting in showvminfo (bug #11065)
• VBoxManage: fixed closing the guest session after executing a guest process via guest control
• VBoxShell: adaptions to interface name changes
• Guest Additions device: fixed a Guest Additions hang when a machine was reset after a crash
• Linux hosts / guests: Linux 3.7-rc1 fixes
• Linux Additions: support X.Org Server 1.13
• Linux Additions: fixed a hang when the X server was restarted with old guest kernels
• Linux Additions: fixed a VBoxService crash during CPU hot remove (bug #10964)
• Windows Additions: fixed automatic screen resize issue for NT4 guests
• OS/2 Additions: fixed shutdown hang
• OS/2 Additions: fixed mouse driver panic
• Solaris hosts: fixed autostart service going into maintenance mode after all VMs started
• Solaris hosts: fixed linking the host driver with the dtrace module

VirtualBox 4.2.0 (released 2012-09-13)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

• Improved Windows 8 support, in particular many 3D-related fixes
• GUI: VM groups (bug #288)
• GUI: expert mode for wizards
• GUI: allow to alter some settings during runtime
• Support for up to 36 network cards, in combination with an ICH9 chipset configuration (bug #8805)
• Resource control: added support for limiting network IO bandwidth; see the manual for more information (bug #3653)
• Added possibility to start VMs during system boot on Linux, OS X and Solaris; see the manual for more information (bug #950)
• Added experimental support for Drag'n'drop from the host to Linux guests. Support for more guests and for guest-to-host is planned. (bug #81)
• Added support for parallel port passthrough on Windows hosts
• Enhanced API for controlling the guest; please see the SDK reference and API documentation for more information

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

• Mac OS X hosts: sign application and installer to avoid warnings on Mountain Lion
• VMM: fixed a potential host crash triggered by shutting down a VM when another VM was running (only affected 32-bit hosts and 64-bit OS X hosts, 4.1 regression, bug #9897)
• VMM: fixed a potential host crash under a high guest memory pressure (seen with Windows 8 guests)
• VMM: improved VM context switch performance for Intel CPUs using nested paging
• VMM: added support for FlushByASID features of AMD CPUs (Bulldozer and newer)
• VMM: fixed unreal mode handling on older CPUs with VT-x (gPXE, Solaris 7/8/9; bug #9941)
• VMM: fixed MP tables fixes for I/O APIC interrupt routing relevant for ancient SMP guests (e.g. old OS/2 releases)
• VMM: support recent VIA CPUs (bug #10005)
• VMM: fixed handling of task gates if VT-x/AMD-V is disabled
• VMM: page fusion fixes
• GUI: network operations manager
• GUI: allow taking screenshots of the current VM window content (bug #5561)
• GUI: allow automatically sorting of the VM list
• GUI: allow starting of headless VMs from the GUI
• GUI: allow reset, shutdown and power off from the Manager window
• GUI: allow to globally limit the maximum screen resolution for guests
• GUI: show the full medium part on hovering the list of recently used ISO images
• GUI: do not create additional folders when a new machine has a separator character in its name (bug #6541)
• GUI: don't crash on terminate if the settings dialog is still open (bug #9973)
• GUI: consider scaled DPI values when display fonts on Windows hosts (bug #9864)
• GUI: if a bridged network interface cannot be found, don't refuse to start the VM but allow the user to change the setting immediately
• Snapshots: fixed a crash when restoring an old snapshot when powering off a VM (bugs #9364, #9604, #10491)
• Clipboard: disable the clipboard by default for new VMs (see the manual for more information). It can be enabled at any time using the VM menu.
• Settings: sanitize the name of VM folders and settings file (bug #10549)
• Settings: allow to store the iSCSI initiator secret encrypted
• NAT: improvements for the built-in TFTP server (bugs #7385, #10286)
• NAT: fixed memory leak when disabling the NAT engine (bug #10801)
• E1000: 802.1q VLAN support (bug #10429)
• Storage: implemented burning of audio CDs in passthrough mode
• Storage: fixed audio CD passthrough for certain media players
• Storage: implemented support for discarding unused image blocks through TRIM for SATA and IDE and UNMAP for SCSI when using VDI images
• Storage: added support for QED images
• Storage: added support for QCOW (full support for v1 and readonly support for v2 images)
• Storage: added readonly support for VHDX images
• USB: don't crash if a USB device is plugged or unplugged when saving or loading the VM state (SMP guests only)
• Solaris additions: added support for X.org Server 1.11 and 1.12
• Solaris additions: switched to using an in-kernel mouse driver
• Windows hosts: no need to recreate host-only adapters after a VirtualBox update
• Windows hosts: updated toolchain; make the source code compatible to VC 2010 and enable some security-related compiler options
• Windows Additions: fixed memory leak in VBoxTray (bug #10808)