Version 4.2.0 Release Candidate 2 (2012-08-22)

This 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 chapter 6.9, Limiting bandwidth for network I/O, page 96
 Added possibility to start VMs during system boot on Linux, OS X and Solaris; see chapter 9.24, Starting virtual machines during system boot, page 175 (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: 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)
 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 poweroff 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)
 Snapshots: fixed a crash when restoring an old snapshot when powering off a VM (bugs #9364, #9604, #10491)
 Settings: sanitise the name of VM folders and settings file (bug #10549)
 Settings: allow to store the iSCSI initiator secret encrypted
 E1000: 802.1q VLAN support (bug #10429)
 Storage: implemented burning of audio CDs in passthrough mode
 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
 Solaris additions: added support for X.org Server 1.11 and 1.12
 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
 NAT: improvements for the built-in TFTP server (bugs #7385, #10286)

Version 4.2.0 Release Candidate 3 (2012-08-29)

This 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 chapter 6.9, Limiting bandwidth for network I/O, page 96
 Added possibility to start VMs during system boot on Linux, OS X and Solaris; see chapter 9.24, Starting virtual machines during system boot, page 175 (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: 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
 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 poweroff 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)
 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 chapter 13.3.2.3, Clipboard, page 206). It can be enabled at any time using the VM menu.
 Settings: sanitise 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)
 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
 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

Version 4.2.0 Release Candidate 4 (2012-09-08)

This 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 chapter 6.9, Limiting
bandwidth for network I/O, page 96 (bug #3653)
 Added possibility to start VMs during system boot on Linux, OS X and Solaris; see chapter
9.24, Starting virtual machines during system boot, page 175 (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 withWindows
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
 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 poweroff 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 (bug )
 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 chapter 13.3.2.3, Clipboard,
page 206). It can be enabled at any time using the VM menu.
 Settings: sanitise 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)
 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)

Version 4.2.0 (2012-09-13)

This 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 chapter 6.9, Limiting
bandwidth for network I/O, page 96 (bug #3653)
 Added possibility to start VMs during system boot on Linux, OS X and Solaris; see chapter
9.24, Starting virtual machines during system boot, page 175 (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 withWindows
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 poweroff 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 (bug )
 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 chapter 13.3.2.3, Clipboard,
page 206). It can be enabled at any time using the VM menu.
 Settings: sanitise 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)

Version 4.2.2 (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 cancelled
with async 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