EDIT: Shutting down Last.FM fixed it! Still kinda "dumb" that I can't use Last.FM with it... I guess I'll run it inside the VM for now...

EDIT2: Opening the problematic app AFTER Fusion is loaded won't cause the problem... Last.FM works if you launch the VM first...

I am using Mac OSX 10.;5.5. & I am using WinXP 32 SP3 in a VMWare Fusion 1.1.3 instance. Occaisionally, I had the same problem where WinXP would suddenly start refusing to accept my keyboard input & would give me the "boing" error sound as if I was typing with focus outside the VMware window. My mouse input worked and I could call up the Microsoft On Screen Keyboard and input text that way.

Restarting the VMWare instance & even rebooting the whole Mac didn't seem to cure the issue.

When I read the solution posted in this thread - I didn't think it would apply since I shouldn't be using anything requiring Secure input. But when I ran the command below - I found this:

$ ioreg -l -w 0 | grep SecureInput
| "IOConsoleUsers" = ({"{color:#ff0000}kCGSSessionSecureInputPID"=141{color},"kCGSSessionLoginwindowSafeLogin"=No,"kCGSSessionAuditIDKey"=0,"kCGSessionLoginDoneKey"=Yes,

"kCGSSessionSystemSafeBoot"=No,"kCGSSessionOnConsoleKey"=Yes,"kCGSSessionUserIDKey"=501,"kSCSecuritySessionID"=8499344,"kCGSSessionUserNameKey"="*****",

"kCGSSessionGroupIDKey"=20,"kCGSSessionConsoleSetKey"=0,"kCGSSessionIDKey"=256,"kCGSessionLongUserNameKey"="**** ******"})

$ ps -ef | grep 141
501 141 103 0 0:16.34 ?? 1:18.91 /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -psn_0_86037

When I closed down Firefox - and restarted the VMWare instance - the keyboard responded fine in WinXP. Then I restarted Firefox - all good. As someone else noted - as long as VMWare is started BEFORE Firefox - everything seems to be fine.

Hope this helps someone else!