VirtualBox 4.2 Release Candidate 4 released

Please do NOT use this VirtualBox Release Candidate on production machines. Entering Release candidate phase means that the feature list is frozen. A VirtualBox Release Candidate is meant for evaluation and testing purposes.

You can download the binaries here.

Please do NOT open bug reports at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Bugtracker but use our VirtualBox Beta/Release Candidate Feedback forum to report any problems with the Release Candidate. Please concentrate on reporting regressions since VirtualBox 4.1.18.

Incomplete list of fixes since VirtualBox 4.2.0 RC3:

  • 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)
  • GUI: a couple of VM group related fixes
  • 3D Support: WDDM: fixed fullscreen without Aero
  • NAT: fixed memory leak when disabling the NAT engine
  • OS X host: installer fixes
  • Windows Additions: fixed memory leak in VBoxTray (bug #10808)

VirtualBox 4.2 will be a new major release. The following major new features were added:
  • mproved 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
  • 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 the manual for more information). 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)
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