Select an Aero theme (for example : Windows 7) and the windows will become transparent. There are tutorials on the Internet to solve this problem. To do this, right-click 'Customize' on the desktop. First of all, Windows 7 starter and Windows 7 home basic do not support the transparency effect. Now that 3D acceleration and the Direct3D driver are enabled, you will be able to activate the Aero interface. The installation program 'VirtualBox Guest Additions' is displayed.Ĭheck the 'Direct3D Support (Experimental)' box.Īs indicated by the installation wizard, this system supports the Windows Aero interface (WDDM).Īnswer 'No' to this question : Would you like to install basic Direct3D support instead?Īs stated by VirtualBox, the use of the 3D acceleration requires at least 128 MB. Then, go to the Devices menu and click on : Insert Guest Additions CD image. Move the slider to allocate at least 128 MB of video memory to your Windows 7 virtual machine. full screen Window transparency isn't displayed property Program does not display properly. Then, you will see (thanks to the colors) that the video memory will have to be at least 128 MB. 5 Program Compatibility What display problems do you notice.

Then, in the Display section, check the 'Enable 3D Acceleration' and 'Enable 2D Video Acceleration'. To do this, select your Windows 7 virtual machine and click on Configuration. However, you must first enable the 2D and 3D accelerations in your VM configuration. However, if you insist on enabling transparency in Windows 8, do the following: First, you need to open Personalization. To overcome this problem, you need to install the VirtualBox's experimental 3D support. More specifically, transparent windows on Windows 8 are quite literally transparent you see through the windows completely, without the blur effect Windows 7 has. If the driver is not installed, Windows will tell you about a WDDM compatible driver. Indeed, if you try to activate the Aero feature by right-clicking 'Customize' on the desktop, you will see a warning appear.Ĭlick on the warning : Troubleshoot problems with transparency and other Aero effects. This prevents you from enjoying the transparency of Windows 7 windows. Right click it and Start if not started, or Restart if started already. Find Desktop Window Manager Session Manager. This can be done by Win + R > services.msc.

By default, when you install Windows 7 in a VirtualBox virtual machine, Aero will not work. This can be solved by the following: Open Services.

Windows 7 transparency not working