- New settings/disk file layout for VM portability; see chapter 10.1, Where VirtualBox stores its files.
- Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) support; see chapter 1.12, Importing and exporting virtual machines.
- VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts.
- Language bindings: uniform Java bindings for both local (COM/XPCOM) and remote (SOAP) invocation APIs.
- Chipset: added support for the Intel ICH9 chipset with 3 PCI buses, PCI express and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI)
- Audio: Intel HD Audio is now available as guest hardware, for better support with modern guest operating systems.
- GUI: redesigned user interface with guest window preview
- GUI: new display mode with downscaled guest display
- Resource control: added support for limiting a VM’s CPU time and IO bandwidth.
- Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images
- Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images
- Windows Additions: support for automatically updating the Guest Additions (requires installed Windows Guest Additions 4.0 or later)
- Guest Additions: support for copying files into the guest file system In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
- VMM: Enable large page support by default on 64-bit hosts (applies to nested paging only)
- VMM: fixed guru meditation when running Minix.
- GUI: the guest VM list is now sortable
- GUI: add the possibility to delete all harddisk attached to an VM, when this VM is deleted.
- GUI: built-in creation of desktop file shortcuts to start VMs on double click.
- GUI: add configuration dialog for port forwarding in NAT mode.
- GUI: show the guest window content on save and restore
- GUI: certain GUI warnings don’t stop the VM output anymore
- Settings: deleting a machine now automatically deletes all snapshots and saved states as well, it is no longer necessary to manually delete snapshots first; VBoxManage unregistervm – delete can do the same now
- Snapshots: added screenshots
- 3D support: allow use of CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH again.
- 3D support: fixed various clipping/visibility issues.
- 3D support: guest application stack corruption when using glGetVertexAttrib[ifd]v.
- 2D Video acceleration: multimonitor support
- VRDP: fixed rare crash in multimonitor configuration
- Display: fixed occasional guest resize crash
- NAT: port forwarding rules can be applied at runtime
- SATA: allow to attach CD/DVD-ROM drives including passthrough.
- Floppy: support readonly image files, taking this as the criteria for making the medium readonly.
- Audio: the DirectSound backend now allows VMs to be audible when another DirectSound application is active, including another VM.
- EFI: support for SATA disks and CDROMs
- BIOS: reduce the stack usage of the VESA BIOS function #4F01 (Quake fix)
- OVF/OVA: significant performance improvements during export and import
- OVF/OVA: creation of the manifest file on export is optional now
- OVF/OVA: allow overwriting the target disk format on import
- OVF/OVA: fixed export of VMs with iSCSI disks
- Storage: Apple DMG image support for the virtual CD/DVD.
- Linux host USB support: introduced a less invasive way of accessing raw USB devices.
- Guest Additions: Shared Folders now can be marked as being auto-mounted on Windows,Linux and Solaris guests
- Linux Additions: Shared Folders now support symbolic links.
- Linux Additions: combined 32-bit and 64-bit additions into one file
- Windows Additions: automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 is now able to handle renamed user accounts; added various bugfixes