Windows 7: Locking a mouse/keyboard to a virtual PC

Hello all,

I'm having some trouble figuring this out. I looked about in the forums, but there's a good chance I missed the information for which I was searching. As it is, I apologize for the inconvenience.



While running a game in Windows 7, I'd like to open up VPC on one of the other monitors, but bind a mouse and keyboard (or at least a keyboard) solely to the VPC so while I use my controller to play the game (currently Mafia II), I would be able to look at and navigate web pages and interactive maps on the VPC. With this the game would be able to ignore the bound-to-VPC keyboard and not interrupt my navigation of the game's world, essentially operating as if I were running two separate machines.

Obviously I could just use a second computer, but convenience is key in this scenario.

Can anyone assist me with this? I'd greatly prefer to be able to do it in Windows Virtual PC as opposed to installing another virtualization client (e.g. VMWare).

Kindest Regards,
-FallenAce

Hi FallenAce, welcome to the Seven Forums.

I'm afraid that is not going to work. In theory it works: if integration features are not installed, a VPC virtual machine captures the pointer and keyboard when you click inside the vm window, releasing them only when you A) press CTRL + ALT + RIGHT ARROW, or B) activate another Explorer process. So, making your game the active process you automatically release both pointer and and keyboard from vm.

Kari

Thanks for the quick reply. I figured it wouldn't work.

I am not sure about MS VPC but on VMware and VirtualBox, you can indeed do this.

Here has info on how to use VMLite to enable one computer to be used as two:

Two Computers in One? - VMLite

We will actually provide a device to do this too.

might be helpful

What I do with my setup with Virtualbox/VMware is, put the VM window to full screen on monitor #2, the go to the settings for the USB controller for you VM and check "show all USB input devices". From here, there will be icons for the keyboard and mouse on the bottom left where all the device icons are. attach a second keyboard/mouse and select to connect them to the VM from there.