Host OS: OpenSuse 11.2

When I click the "capture button", nothing happens ?!?! The little "Down arrow" on the right bottom of the VirtualBox window gets "Green" when I click "capture", but the mouse is not captured!

Please help!

Probably the guest additions are installed in the guest??? (what is your guest OS?)

Is the pointer captured when you click inside the guest display area?

I did answer both of these questions in my OP.

1. Guest OS : Windows XP (The thread title)
2. By "guest display area" if you mean the VirtualBox window where Windows XP boots, then I have detailed this in my OP. If you meant some thing else, then please elaborate your question.

What does this mean, I have no clue.

and the mouse pointer I am referring to is of the optical mouse I have, I have not tested yet the inbuilt mouse of the laptop.

The most basic way of "capturing" the pointer, that is of having mouse movements moving the pointer on the guest's display, is to move the host's pointer into the area of the guest's display and clicking it. It is the most basic way because it does not depend on the VrtualBox <host> key or on having VrtualBoxGuest Additions installed. If that works then we are assured of basic functionality and can focus on why the host key is not working.

Is VrtualBox Guest Additions installed on the guest?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <LINUX-Virtualisation> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Check your task bar; if there is an icon that says VirtualBox -something -, then the additions are installed...

I ran VirtualBox & form the terminal, and thus the VirtualBox menu window opened and I clicked Start icon. Then another small window opened in which I could see Windows booting up. I clicked with the optical mouse I have, on the window showing Windows bootup and received a message box saying that "If you click capture here, ...., to uncapture, press right Ctrl". I did click capture but mouse was not captured. The little "Down arrow" on the right bottom of the VirtualBox window turned "Green" when I clicked "capture".

I have said this in a short form in my OP, if the "guest display area" means something else, then you better explain its meaning.

I didn't install anything extra manually on it, what is the way to check whether they are automatically installed on it ?

Do you mean the task bar of OpenSuse or the Windows ?

VirtualBox Guest Additions is not automagically installed; it is a manual installation. VirtualBox VMs are much more usable with Guest Additions so you will almost certainly want to install, in which case you might as well do it now (should be possible without mouse) in the hope that it fixes the problem.

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Actually I forgot to mention that the pointer got captured the first two times after I freshly installed the VB, after that it never worked.

Which suggests a possible solution by re-installing VirtualBox. You would not have to re-define your VMs or re-install software to the virtual HDDs. If you are not already using version 3.2.10, it is an opportunity to upgrade too.

I doubt if that would help since we have still not figured why it did stop working suddenly , but since you say I'll try that out. I downloaded the latest version of .run file from the VB site.

It might not help but it is easy to try and might fix it whereas figuring out why it stopped working could be very hard, perhaps practically impossible.

I meant the task bar of the Windows guest (not your OpenSuse host)

3 days back, I found a menu named "Devices", at the top of the Virtual box window which had a check box named "Usb devices..", I checked that, my mouse pointers got trapped by the Windows XP running as the guest

BUT

I just couldn't get out of it, had to restart the lappy to get my mouse pointer back
Any suggestions for this?