Mouse snap-to doesn't work in XP guest

[Jackrh]

The mouse pointer option to "Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box" (aka snap-to) doesn't work in any Windows XP guest VMs on my system. The host OS is Vista-64 running VMware Workstation 6.5, and the guest OS's are XP Pro SP3. VMware Tools have been installed.

Is this a known issue? Is there a work-around? I'm a new VMware Workstation user, and have used snap-to for so long that I automatically expect the pointer to be on the default button.

Thanks for any assistance - Jack

[admin · Accepted solution]

It's a known issue. It won't work because the mouse in the guest is an absolute pointing device, and that prevents applications in the guest from changing the mouse cursor position.

You can modify your .vmx file (make sure that the VM is powered-off and closed first) and add the lines:

vmmouse.present = "FALSE"

mouse.vusb.absDisabled = "TRUE"

but note that if you do this, you'll lose the ability to automatically grab/ungrab when your mouse moves in/out of the VM window.