VMWare Workstation 6.5 will not grab input if I use Remote Desktop to access host

[jpdavis]

VMWare Workstation 6.5.3

Host = Windows XP SP2 (32-bit)

Guest = Linux RHEL 4 (32-bit)

If I am connected to the host through Remote Desktop, the VMWare window will not grab input at all: the mouse pointer remains a Host pointer regardless of the VM's settings to grab input on clicking or entering window. It works fine when using the host locally (sitting in front of it), and it worked fine under Workstation 6.0. The problem started with my update to 6.5. Any ideas?

[LinuxDude]

I have this problem when connected locally on Debian GNU/Linux testing/unstable.

Windows XP pro SP3 guest is booted and login screen is showing, but I cannot input anything.

Mouse cursor appears as the input is not grabbed. If I press Control+G (grab input), mouse cursor disappears and appears as it would be in Windows, but if I just wiggle the mouse, the cursor immediatly "goes out" of Windows. Windows themselves don't "notice" anything. The keyboard is also detached from windows. After a while a screen saver appears and it is impossible to get rid of it.

Problem started with upgrade to 6.5.3 (6.5.2 was fine) and it's completely unusable now.

Message was edited by: LinuxDude. Now I noticed that I have SP3 not SP2!

[LinuxDude]

OK, some fiddling revealed that VMware Workstation somehow thinks that windows is running in 640x480 resolution and ungrabs input if mouse goes beyond that (even though ungrabbing is disabled in my preferences). If I set resolution to 640x480 then problem does not appear. Grab the input on mouse click does not work at all.

I have a dual monitor setup on Nvidia card where main screen is 1280x800 and desktop is extended to the right with 1680x1024 screen. I run vmware workstation on that 1680x1024 screen maximized, so the windows login dialog is in the center of this big screen and basically unreachable since vmware ungrabs everytime mouse leaves 640x480 region in the upper left corner.

I've managed to login and upgrade vmware tools with keyboard while mouse in that magic corner, but situation did not improve at all.

Interestingly I have nearly identical software setup with Windows XP home guest on Debian host, running on ATI card and single screen of resolution 1900x1200 and the problem does not show up there.

[Bulgroz]

@Linuxdude : I have exactly the same problem as you, with VMplayer 2.5.3 on a host with opensuse 11.1 or 11.2 + KDE4.3.0.

Could you please tell us about the versions of KDE/gnome/Xorg on your two different machines ?

Message was edited by: Bulgroz at 13:32 GMT

[LinuxDude]

Machine with problem: Gnome 2.26.3, Xorg 7.3 (from testing), Linux 2.6.30.5 (custom) 32bit i686 arch.

Machine without problems: Gnome 2.26.3, Xorg 7.4 (from unstable -- I had to get latest fglrx mess for ATI card), Linux 2.6.30-1-686-bigmem.

[LinuxDude]

it seems that the more relevant issue is here:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/228636?tstart=0

and I smell that Microsoft USB HID drivers are to blame... another sneaky Windows update?

[Bulgroz]

It is interesting that you have the problem with gnome because from what I already saw on the net, I thought it occured only for people with KDE.

I am trying to see if the problem is the same on another machine with on older version of the system similar to the configuration on which VMplayer used to work for me. (Xorg 7.4, KDE 4.2.4, opensuse 11.1, kernel 2.6.27.29)

At the moment, I have installed VMplayer 2.5.3 and I am running an old Win2K virtual machine with VMware tools build 80187 and eveything is OK !

I will try to extract the newest Windows vmware tools from a workstation 6.5.3 bundle to see if it changes anything.

What is the build of your Windows VMware tools by the way ?

EDIT: In my VM I have a "VMware pointing device" + 2 USB HID mouse, but I think I use the VMware driver. OK, I switch to the thread you pointed to me for my future posts

[LinuxDude]

I did what was suggested here:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/228636

and it helped to get rid of the problem, i.e. start vmware with this line:

• VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=force vmware*

[simbab]

I had this same problem, and the VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=force variable fixes it for me.

GTK+ was updated recently for GNOME 2.28 on Debian unstable, does this have something to do with it?

[LinuxDude]

Probably. My guess is that something radicaly changed in GTK so that it does not work with VMWare.

VMWare's engineers somehow forsaw this (maybe similar problems have happened before) and hence they ship their own build of GTK, thus one can fall back to it independently from decisions in various distributions.