VirtualBox unable to start error: rc=-5640

If you see this error when trying to run a guest machine in VirtualBox:

(rc=-5640)
Please try reinstalling VirtualBox.
where: supR3HardenedWinReSpawn what: 1
VERR_SUP_VP_THREAD_NOT_ALONE (-5640) - Process Verification Failure: The process has more than one thread.

It seems that the program is not correctly parsing the memory holding the count of the threads. If you try several times, you may start the VM successfully but the chance of success is random. 

You can also try random things to see if by luck the system would wipe off the affected memory so that the program reads 0 from it. The random things you can try could be opening/closing a browser tab, running/closing a program, locking/unlocking screen, etc.

If nothing works, by increasing the memory of the VM, we have a better chance to have the counter read as 0 so that the VM can start.

Anyway, after fail to start the VM for several times, you may try this simple trick too. It takes about 1 minute of your time and may surprisingly work (you may still need to try starting the VM a couple of times after the change, because it only increases the chance of success but whether it will succeed is still random.)

1. Go to the Settings of the guest VM.
2. Select System.
3. Select the Motherboard tab.
4. Increase Base Memory (in my case, I only increase it by 100MB).
5. Start the VM.

VirtualBox: copy and paste between host and guest OS

To enable or disable the copy-and-paste between the host OS and the guest OS:

1. Select the guest virtual machine.
2. Click on the Settings button or from menu Machine|Settings...
3. In Settings, click on General.
4. Click on the Advanced tab.
5. Click on the option of Shared Clipboard and choose Bidirectional.
6. Restart the guest VM.

How to fix the uncontrollable mouse when playing Minecraft on VMware Player

When playing Minecraft on VMware Player's guest OS, the game and the host OS both try to grab the mouse. Hence when you move the mouse, the scene of the game moves wildly.

One trick to fix that is to disconnect the mouse from the host OS so that only the game will control the mouse.

Step 1: before starting the VM image, change its settings: Hareware -> USB Controller -> Check the checkbox of Show all USB input devices.

Step 2: Starts the VM image. After it is booted, find in the top right corner the icon that represents the mouse. Right click it and choose to Connect (Disconnect from host).

Step 3: Enjoy the game.

Step 4: When finish playing, shut down the guest OS and the host OS will gain back the control of the mouse.

Turn off beep of VM image

The VMware Knowledge Base web site kb.vmware.com provides a solution to turn off the PC speaker for all virtual machines. You can just add
    mks.noBeep = "TRUE"
to the global configuration file config.ini.

On Windows 7, the configuration file is located at C:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMware_Product\config.ini.

However, a non administrator user cannot modify that file. Doing that will result in an "Access is denied" error. For a regular user, you have to change each vm image individually. Open the ???.vmx file with a text editor and add the above fix:
    mks.noBeep = "TRUE"

Before you make any manual changes to the ???.vmx file, remember to make a backup of it.

Test your web site with different versions of Internet Explorers (IE)

From http://dev.modern.ie/tools/vms/, you can download Windows virtual machines with different versions of Internet Explorers. The available IEs are:

• IE6 on XP
• IE7 on Vista
• IE8 on XP
• IE8 on Win7
• IE9 on Win7
• IE10 on Win7
• IE10 on Win8
• IE10 on Win8.1
• IE11 on Win7

Because the Windows on the VM are the beta versions, they will expire after 90 days. If you want to repeat on using them, make a snapshot or keep the downloaded zip file.

Shrink a VM image

In the guest OS is Windows, start a cmd terminal and go to the VMware Tools folder:
    cd "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools"

List the available mount points:
    .\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe disk list

Shrink the mount point. For example, if the disk list command returns C:\, run the shrink command as:
    .\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe disk shrink C:\

To see the options of the command, run:
    .\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe help

To see the options of the subcommand, e.g. disk, run:
    .\VMwareToolboxCmd.exe help disk

On Linux or Solaris, use /usr/sbin/vmware-tool-cmd instead of VMwareToolboxCmd.exe. On FreeBSD, use /usr/local/sbin/vmware-tool-cmd.

Get the reference of VMware Tools at http://www.wmware.com/pdf/vmware-tools-cli.pdf. In the document, please note that shrink is missing after disk in the syntax of the command utility-name disk mount-point.