VirtualBox flashes in Windows task bar

Question

I'm running VirtualBox (host operating system is Windows Vista, guest is Ubuntu Linux) and maybe a couple of times a day it lights up its icon in the Windows taskbar for no reason (I have update checking turned off, and the program isn't visibly doing anything else to account for this). Anyone know a way to stop it doing this, either in VirtualBox, or in Windows to selectively ignore FlashWindow calls from a particular program?

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&p=113082 is the one reference I've been able to find so far, where somebody else had the same problem; another poster claimed it was a problem with Windows itself, which is obviously not the case since no other Windows program flashes its taskbar icon except with identifiable reason.

Answer 1

I see this too, but it happens only when VirtualBox was running over night. Invariably in the morning, the taskbar button is orange. Both the virtual machine's window as well as the control window of VirtualBox need to be brought to the front once each to stop this. No popup or similar ever shows up, and no harm seems to be done. No other application I run does anything similar.

Version is VirtualBox 3.2.6 on Windows 7 (x64), with a single virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64).

Answer 2

I don't use VirtualBox, but I do use Windows, and I do know that an innocent and inactive program can start flashing on the taskbar.

This is normally associated in my experience with using the Win-M key combination to minimize all windows. In that case, Windows sometimes loses its context and decides to start flashing some other program, even if it was already minimized.

If you have only one other program besides VirtualBox on the taskbar, and you use Win-M to minimize the active window, that can explain the flashing.