Oct23

Running 2 OSes with separate Mice and Keyboards

Posted by Bachtiar Rahady on 10/23/09  ~  Posted in: Fun, Computer, Tips n Trick, Nice Programs  ~  1 feedback »

Sometimes your kids or wife wanted to use the computer, but you are using it (and there's only one computer! yes, life is that hard hehe..) This next trick is surely fun thing to do with your dual monitor and a couple of spare keyboard and mouse. Psst.. that way, you can virtually have 2 computers!

I don't know about other Virtual Machine, but I'm using VirtualBox. Maybe VMWare or Parallel Desktop can do it too, I haven't tried it. Let me know if anyone knows. (FYI, I'm doing it on my MacBook Pro running Leopard and Windows XP64).

The Setup

What you need:

  • of course an extra monitor attached to your computer VGA Out,
  • VirtualBox software, get it FREE for personal use here: http://www.virtualbox.org/,
  • Windows OS (haven't tried other than XP64 though),
  • an extra mouse and a keyboard (preferably Bluetooth, but theoretically you can use USB too).

Ok, let's begin!

Follow up:

  1. Now if your VirtualBox Machine is ready and running,

    Warning about mouse integration between Host and Guest OS

  2. connect the USB mouse and select from VirtualBox VM menu (not VirtualBox menu) Devices - USB Devices - (mouse driver) like this (notice there are 2 mouse driver? just select one to be use on Guest OS):

    A list of USB Devices attached to the Virtual Machine

    A list of USB Devices. If the menu is grayed out, you have to configure it in VirtualBox VM Settings.

  3. next, click on Machine menu (using the other mouse or trackpad) and choose Disable Mouse Integration.. (to Enable it?)

    I'm confused! Is it "Disabling" the Integration or "Enabling" it?

  4. if you ever lose your mouse on the Host OS, untrap it by pressing "HOST Key" (default set to LEFT COMMAND, that is your left Apple Key; mine assigned to RIGHT COMMAND, so it will not conflicting with "LEFT WinKey"..),
  5. Oh look! You have 2 Mouse Pointer on screen! One is Host mouse, the other is Guest mouse (inside Windows OS).
  6. Move the windows to the external display (using Host mouse obviously), and make it full-screen.. Nice!
  7. And for the keyboard, I suggest using Bluetooth Keyboard and enable the bluetooth to the Guest OS. This way, Host OS will lose bluetooth focus and when it detect a keyboard, the Guest OS will use it.

The Performance

Although it feels like we now have 2 "computers", the truth is, it still only ONE computer. So don't push it too hard by playing multiplayer game! (Except maybe you are running on Quad Core Processor with 16Gigs of RAM and a thousand Dollars GPU!) This setup is useful for others to check emails, light-browsing, or just chatting.

Anyway, here's how I set the "Virtually Two in One Computer" (video on YouTube). Enjoy!