Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX VERSION 3.1.0_BETA2 - Manual (Page 21)

1 First steps
1.7 Running your virtual machine
You will now see your new virtual machine in the list of virtual machines, at the left of
the VirtualBox main window. To start the virtual machine, simply double-click on it,
or select it and press the “Start” button at the top.
This opens up a new window, and the virtual machine which you selected will boot
up. Everything which would normally be seen on the virtual system’s monitor is shown
in the window, as can be seen with the image in chapter
1.2 , Some terminology , page
11 .
Since this is the first time you are running this VM, another wizard will show up
to help you select an installation medium. Since the VM is created empty, it would
otherwise behave just like a real computer with no operating system installed: it will
do nothing and display an error message that it cannot boot an operating system.
For this reason, the “First Start Wizard” helps you select an operating system
medium to install an operating system from. In most cases, this will either be a real
CD-ROM or DVD (VirtualBox can then configure the virtual machine to use your host’s
drive), or you might have an ISO image of a CD-ROM or DVD handy, which VirtualBox
can then present to the virtual machine.
In both cases, after making the choices in the wizard, you will be able to install your
operating system.
In general, you can use the virtual machine much like you would use a real com-
puter. There are couple of points worth mentioning however.
1.7.1 Keyboard and mouse support in virtual machines
1.7.1.1 Capturing and releasing keyboard and mouse
Since the operating system in the virtual machine does not “know” that it is not run-
ning on a real computer, it expects to have exclusive control over your keyboard and
mouse. This is, however, not the case since, unless you are running the VM in full-
screen mode, your VM needs to share keyboard and mouse with other applications
and possibly other VMs on your host.
As a result, initially after installing a host operating system and before you install
the guest additions (we will explain this in a minute), only one of the two – your VM
or the rest of your computer – can “own” the keyboard and the mouse. You will see a
second
mouse pointer which will always be confined to the limits of the VM window.
Basically, you activate the VM by clicking inside it.
To return ownership of keyboard and mouse to your host operating system,
VirtualBox reserves a special key on your keyboard for itself: the “host key”. By
default, this is the right Control key on your keyboard; on a Mac host, the default host
key is the left Command key. You can change this default in the VirtualBox Global
Settings. In any case, the current setting for the host key is always displayed at the
bottom right of your VM window,
should you have forgotten about it:
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