Why does Qt Creator 3.0.0 Welcome Mode not work in VM?

Question

I originally installed Qt 5.20 with Qt Creator 3.0 on my Win7 64 bit machine and it worked flawlessly. Then I wanted to install it into a Win7 32 bit virtual machine (using VirtualBox). In the VM I start off on the qt-project.org site and download a version. I've tried both the Qt Online Installer for Windows (13 MB) (Info) link and the Qt 5.2.0 for Windows 32-bit (MinGW 4.8, OpenGL, 689 MB) (Info) link. Both installs work and I can compile a simple Hello world demo. However, when Qt starts the Qt Welcome Mode is just a transparent window showing the contents of the desktop. If you change modes and go back to the Welcome mode it will then just show the contents of the previous mode. I would like to have access to the examples and tutorial links.

I'm using VirtualBox 4.3.6 and I have Guest Additions Installed. I'm running a copy of Win 7 Ultimate. The VM is very clean, it has Chrome installed, the latest Win updates and MS Security Essentials and that's about it. The virtual hard disk (vdi) has about 50 Gigabytes of free space after the install.

I've tried

1. turning off Windows Firewall and MS Security Essential real time protection. 
2. running as administrator.
3. running in xp SP2 and SP3, and win95 compatibility modes
4. running with Aero disabled

Nothing has helped. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I't a known bug. The Oracle Virtual Box has problems rendering the QML apps/widgets. And the welcome screen in QtCreator is a QML widget. https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-34964

Workaround Start QtCreator with -noload Welcome argument, and later in Help > About Plugins... menu disable "Welcome" for good.

Answer 2

As mentioned here, the solution is to do the following:

1. In Qt Creator, go to Help -> About Plugins...
2. Uncheck Qt Creator --> Welcome
3. Restart Qt Creator

Worked for me.