VMware Communities: Message List - Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

joatamon — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:47:31 GMT

This is an update to my original post. All of my original problems have been resolved, one way or another, and I hope that the following might prove useful to someone.

Most of my problems were resolved by subsequent releases of VMware. However, the problem with the sticking cursor remained. Whenever I clicked inside a VM window (XP or Vista), the mouse stayed in the window until I pressed command-ctrl. This was a great source of irritation. I had other problems with the latest VMware update, so I switched to Parallels, and no, I am NOT suggesting that anyone else do the same!

Much to my surprise, the mouse problem existed in Parallels as well! The mouse did work properly in "Coherence" mode, but in "Window" mode the VM grabbed the mouse until I pressed the key combination to release it. I visited the Parallels web site and found an article about this very problem. The solution was to disable "pointer trails" under the mouse settings in Control Panel. This solved the problem instantly. Perhaps it will solve the problem forVMware users as well.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

WoodyZ — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:23:57 GMT

3NDL3R wrote: Now using Microsoft Excel under Windows XP Pro SP3 I have the same CTRL+CMD problem. I need to press the CTRL+CMD keys
to use the mouse wheel to resize the zoom level in excel and/or other applications. Releasing those keys kills the full screen mode.

Any idea how to solve this problem? I found no way to reassign those keys and/or disable the function to release full screen under mac.

It is my understanding that it is hard coded and cannot be modified and VMware is aware the some users what to be able to control this and have not provided a solution to this yet or if they're even going to.

Message was edited by: WoodyZ

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

3NDL3R — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:19:10 GMT

Hi,

I´m using the VM Fusion v2.0 on a macbook pro (v4.1) 15,4" with a2,4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM with OS Update 10.5.6.

Now using Microsoft Excel under Windows XP Pro SP3 I have the same CTRL+CMD problem. I need to press the CTRL+CMD keys
to use the mouse wheel to resize the zoom level in excel and/or other applications. Releasing those keys kills the full screen mode.

Any idea how to solve this problem? I found no way to reassign those keys and/or disable the function to release full screen under mac.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

PattiH — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 05:29:28 GMT

I don't exactly remember what happened that seemed to initiate my problem getting the BSOD. I do have Fusion 2.0.1 installed. I know I did an upgrade. But I think I might have had problems installing the tools. I only use one program with Fusion, and so I just ignored the problem and used my PC rather than trying to fix it. I have a MacBook Pro with 2.2 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2 GB ram running the current OSX version Leopard. I don't even know how to get Windows to shut down in order to have it try to reboot. I've attached a screen shot. Thanks for any help.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

joatamon — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:07:08 GMT

Yes, I installed, and reinstaled, VMware tools several times in each of the three 2.0.x versions I tried. Nothing seemed to make a difference. I also followed the tech support person's procedure for completely removing VMware from my Mac (and VMware tools from my VMs), and then I tried reinstalling VMware, but that made no difference.

You think Mac OS X changed the boot order? Then how do you explain the fact that immediately before I installed VMware, Mackentosh HD was on disk0, immediately after installing VMware (+and without a reboot+), Mackentosh HD was on disk1? I have the screen shots to prove it. When I rebooted the system, things were back to normal except that VMware had created a "disk1..." Boot Camp VM before the reboot that didn't work afterwards. Yes, I think you should handle it better...

I've upgraded from 2.0.1 to 1.3.3, and I'm almost back to where I was before I installed 2.0.0. I now have problems with my Vista Boot Camp VM that I did not previously have, but at least when it works, all of it works.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

etung — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:31:13 GMT

I installed 2.0.1-128865, and Office stopped complaining, but my cursor consistently didn't work; the VM wouldn't let go of it, and movement inside the VM window was slow. As many of my tools thatI need for my work (specifically Adobe CS3) are still Windows-based, and I was in the middle of a big project this month, this was a major headache for me.

Sounds like VMware Tools are not working for some reason. Did you update them?

After I finished the instalation, disk0 had become disk1 and disk1 had become disk0 (see attached screen shots).

OS X will sometimes change the naming order of disks between boots. Nothing to do with Fusion (except that we should handle it better)

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

joatamon — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:50:45 GMT

It has been almost a month since the beginning of my tale of woe with 2.0. I thought that perhaps it would be useful if I posted an update. At least it might make me feel better...

I have been in contact with VMware support, and I have followed all suggestions. I started with 2.0.0-116369. I later installed 2.0.1-116369, 2.0.1-125077, and finally 2.0.1-128865. Yesterday I upgraded to 1.3.3-94249, which worked fine previously. My cursor problems went away and performance was back to what it was before I installed 2.0, but I seem to have traded one set of problems for another. Perhaps I didn't successfully remove all 2.0 traces from my Mac or my VM. That is the "executive summary". Read on.

I saw no improvement after installing 2.0.1-116369. After installing 2.0.1-125077, the only change I saw was that Office 2007 under Vista wanted to be reactivated. When I tried to reactivate it, I got an error message from Microsoft saying that Office 2007 had been activated too many times. I called Microsoft, and they told me that my activation code was illegal. The BSOD provlem under XP was as bad as ever, but my cursor sometimes worked properly in Vista.

It might have been my imagination, but I seemed to see fewer BSODs from my XP VM, but I had given up on restarting it by this time If I needed to restart, I would shut down the VM, shut down VMware, and then restart.

It was also about this time that I noticed another curious change. I have two drives in my Mac with hardware designations of disk0 and disk1. Disk0 contains Mackentosh HD and my Boot Camp partition running Vista. Disk1 is only used by Time Machine, and I sometimes use it for temporary storage. At least, this was the situation before installing 128865. After I finished the instalation, disk0 had become disk1 and disk1 had become disk0 (see attached screen shots). The Boot Camp VM metadata was in a folder called ".../Virtual Machines/Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk1".

After I shut down and restarted the Mac, the disk names were back the way they should have been. When I started VMware, it created a new folder called ".../Virtual Machines/Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0". In the VMware window, it showed two Boot Camp VM's, but of course the one for disk1 didn't work. The disk0 VM would start.

It was about this time that the VMware support person said (more or less), "OK, you claim it worked under 1.3.3? Reinstall 1.3.3." Since I had problems with 2.0, I reckon I shouldn't use it This is like the old comedy routine, "Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Doctor: Don't do that!"

I upgraded to 13.3 after following the support person's procedure for removing 2.0.1. My Vista Boot Camp VM was back to normal. The cursor worked as it was supposed to, and performance was fine. It was about this time that I hit another problem. I was away from my Mac for a while, and the Vistta VM went to sleep. I got the pop-up message from VMware saying something like, "Your virtual machine has gone to sleep. Click to restart." I can't remember the exact message. I'd seen this before and it had never been a problem. I'd click in the VM window, I'd have to enter my Vista password again, and I'd be right back where I was.

This time was different. Not only did the Vista VM not wake up, but VMware gave an "unrecoverable error" message (see attached log file), and my Mac went to sleep. Well, it didn't exactly go to sleep, but response time could be measured in geological epochs. After more than a half hour of trying, I finally managed to force-quit VMware, and the Mac returned to normal.

Overall, it wasn't a productive day.

OK, I now have my cursor back, but the price seems rather steep. Previously under 2.0, my VMware problems only affected my VMs. Now, they affect the Mac side as wel.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

etung — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:12:32 GMT

I don't know if you've seen this thread, but VMware Fusion 2.0 - Blue Screen of Death has some more about es1371mp.sys BSoDs.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

efraser9 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:02:34 GMT

I had a problem similar to the first one you described, specifically the repeated BSOD on booting, with the most common message being a reference to es1371mp.sys. (I haven't had the mouse problems.) A week ago I rolled back that driver to the previous version, and after restarting, haven't had a crash. I'm crossing my fingers and knocking on wood that this has actually fixed it, but it's been a week now (so around 7 boot-ups) and before it was crashing every day. Hope this helps.

If you want specifics:

I am running Fusion 2.0.1 on a MacBook Pro (OS X 10.5.5). As far as I know, the problem first showed up the day I first installed 2.0, but I think my guest crashed at least once before the installation that day, so I was never sure whether it was coincidence. My guest is Windows XP on a Bootcamp partition. All my drivers were updated according to Windows Update.

I was getting a BSOD when booting up my guest. Sometimes instead, it would freeze at the black screen with the logo and moving blue bar. Sometimes it would also crash some time after a successful boot up. (It never crashed in the middle of my most memory- and CPU-intensive work.) It would get as far as the blue Welcome screen, and then stop. I saw
at least one BSOD when booting directly into Windows without Fusion,
but I do that too rarely to say whether it was comparable. On 11/17 I finally turned automatic restart off, and was able to get the specifics. I installed Fusion 2.0.1 and then tried starting up my guest. It booted up on the 8th try. Of the 7 BSODs, 4 referenced es1371mp.sys (STOP: 0x0000008E). BSODs #2, 3, and 5 were DRIVER_CORRUPTED_MMPOOL (0x000000D0), IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (0x0000000A), and BAD_POOL_CALLER (0x000000C2) respectively. I have the screen captures, the minidump files, and the Fusion log if anyone wants more info because I was going to post and ask for help.

Once I managed to get Windows running, I tried rolling back the driver es1371mp.sys to a previous version. (All information that I could get about the types of crashes I was seeing suggested updating drivers, so it finally occurred to me that maybe if the most updated one was a problem, using an old one would help.) After a couple hours of work, I got one final BSOD (BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER 0x000000FE). At the time it crashed, I was running MATLAB (which was then not running any computation) and Microsoft Office Document Imaging and I believe the search was indexing. I restarted and haven't seen the problem since.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

joatamon — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:06:31 GMT

Hello,

Since posting my original question, I've spent quite a bit of time with both my XP Pro VM and my Vista Ultimate (BootCamp) VM. The Vista BootCamp VM works flawlessly.

I assume that the problem is somehow related to the interaction between the VMware tools and my XP VM. I have reinstalled the tools several times with varying results. Sometimes the installation process would hang and I would not get the installation dialog. I'd abort the task via the "Virtual Machines" drop-down and restart it, and the installation would proceed. I also got the "install VMware tools..." banner at the bottom of the VM window at startup, but the tools were already installed.

I have managed to get the VM to remember the mouse pointer speed, but the mouse-related tools features still don't work; once the VM has the pointer, it won't let it go unless I press ctrl-command, zoom doesn't work properly, etc. I am also still getting frequent VM crashes; mostly at boot time, but at other times as well.

Is there a way to completely wipe the VMware tools from the VM and install again? I do have a backup VM, but it is fairly old and I'd hate to have to use it.

This is not related to my current problem, but I thought I'd ask about it. When I created the VM using Converter, I made the VM over 100GB, because that was the size of the disk on the real PC, and that disk was almost full. I've since moved all of my user data to the Mac side, so the VM is wasting a lot of space. It would work fine at 1/3 or 1/4 the size. I know that VMware won't let me shrink the disk directly, but is there another way of reclaiming the space? Can I run Converter on the VM and create a smaller VM?

Thanks.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

joatamon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:55:34 GMT

Thank you for your very quick reply.

I frequently get a BSOD. It happens almost 100% of the time when I try to restart the VM, and often while using the VM. The last one complained about ES1371MP.SYS.

We've heard some reports of this happening, but aren't sure what's going on yet.

I just uninstalled the VMware tools. I said no to the request to reboot the VM, and shut the VM and VMware down completely and then restarted. I got another BSOD (I hope the included images arrive OK):

~~cid:03EFD7DB-562F-40D3-9D19-82A0E21C2766@home~~

This suggests that Tools are not functioning properly. Can you try to reinstall them?

That was my assumption, and I tried to reinstall them before I reported my problem.

I just tried again after recovering from the BSOD above. The first time I tried, the installation seemed to hang. It did not display the normal tools installation dialog. I cancelled the tools installation and tried again. This time it worked, but the VM hung after I restarted it. I see the window below, and there is no change and no disk activity. If I click inside the window and move the mouse pointer over where the task bar should be, I get the Windows hour glass.

~~cid:911E72EF-B6DB-4897-9077-8E373AF3A6C0@home~~

For historical reasons, we present single-core CPUs to the guest (so a guest would see four single-core CPUs, not two dual-core or one quad-core). The problem is that non-server versions of Windows (including Vista) limits you to two "physical" CPUs.

That is unfortunate, but not anything I'll lose any sleep over.

Thanks.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

bgertzfield — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:02:58 GMT

joatamon wrote:
I have 2 VMs; Vista Ultimate (BootCamp), and XP PRO (created via Converter).

Where did the XP Pro VM come from? Did you convert it from a physical machine, or from Parallels or Microsoft Virtual PC?

* Mouse movement is incredibyl slow in the VM. Each time I boot it, I have to go to Control Panel and change the mouse preferences. I have occasionally had problems with the mouse clicking in the wrong place. I did notice that in Control Panel I see a VMware mouse and two Microsoft mice listed. Maybe there is something I need to get rid of.

Once the VM has the mouse, it won't let go until I press command+ctrl. Under 1.x, I could move the pointer out of the XP VM window and the Mac would take control again.

This sounds like VMware Tools are not installed. Can you make sure they're installed?

* The info on the web site said that I could dedicate 4 cores to a VM, but VMware won't let me do this for either VM. I figured that maybe XP would only support 2 cores, but I think that Vista Ultimate should do better

Windows XP and Vista do not allow more than 2 physical CPUs. VMware Fusion currently exposes 4 physical CPUs to a virtual machine (instead of 2 physical CPUs each with 2 cores), so XP and Vista won't recognize them.

You'll need to run a Windows Server OS, Linux, or Mac OS X Server to see more than 2 CPUs at the moment.

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

WoodyZ — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:53:56 GMT

joatamon wrote: * Mouse movement is incredibyl slow in the VM. Each time I boot it, I have to go to Control Panel and change the mouse preferences.

A while back another user was having an issue with the speed of the mouse and I quickly wrote a program to work-a-round the issue so he would not have to go into Control Panel every time he rebooted so you may want to give it a try.

Have a look at: Re: Pointer Options > Select a pointer speed

Re: Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

etung — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:10:03 GMT

* I frequently get a BSOD. It happens almost 100% of the time when I try to restart the VM, and often while using the VM. The last one complained about ES1371MP.SYS.

We've heard some reports of this happening, but aren't sure what's going on yet.

If I zoom the screen while in the VM, I can't move the visible part of the screen around. Zooming in a 1.x VM worked exactly the same as on the Mac desktop.

I think these may be related, and will ping the appropriate developer for comment.

* Once the VM has the mouse, it won't let go until I press command+ctrl. Under 1.x, I could move the pointer out of the XP VM window and the Mac would take control again.

This suggests that Tools are not functioning properly. Can you try to reinstall them?

Many Fusion 2.0 Problems

joatamon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:32:33 GMT

I'm running MacOS 10.5.5 (with all updates installed) on a Mac Pro with 2 quad core processors and 4GB RAM. I'm using the wired aluminum keyboard and MightyMouse that came with the Mac. VMware Fusion is Version 2.0 (116369). I have 2 VMs; Vista Ultimate (BootCamp), and XP PRO (created via Converter). I I've been running VMware 1.x with only minor problems since May. It was stable and reliable, and made giving up Windows a painless experience.

Yesterday, however, I took advantage of the free 2.0 upgrade, and that's when my problems began. I haven't played much with the Vista BootCamp VM, but it seems to be OK. All the problems below occurred with the XP Pro VM:

I frequently get a BSOD. It happens almost 100% of the time when I try to restart the VM, and often while using the VM. The last one complained about ES1371MP.SYS.
Mouse movement is incredibyl slow in the VM. Each time I boot it, I have to go to Control Panel and change the mouse preferences. I have occasionally had problems with the mouse clicking in the wrong place. I did notice that in Control Panel I see a VMware mouse and two Microsoft mice listed. Maybe there is something I need to get rid of.
Once the VM has the mouse, it won't let go until I press command+ctrl. Under 1.x, I could move the pointer out of the XP VM window and the Mac would take control again.
If I zoom the screen while in the VM, I can't move the visible part of the screen around. Zooming in a 1.x VM worked exactly the same as on the Mac desktop.
The info on the web site said that I could dedicate 4 cores to a VM, but VMware won't let me do this for either VM. I figured that maybe XP would only support 2 cores, but I think that Vista Ultimate should do better

I'm new to the Mac and VMware; I started using both in May, so I'll admit that I may have done something wrong. However, I looked before I tried to do the upgrade, and all I could find was installation instructions, so I followed those. I tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling the VMware tools, and that did not help. I did notice that when the VMware tools were not installed, the mouse behaved correctly, but when I reinstalled the tools, the problems came back. I would appreciate any help.