Problems with Synaptics touchpad not able to scroll in Guest OS (Windows XP)

[kjoyce]

I have an HP Pavilion laptop running VMware player 3.0.0 build-203739 with VMware tools. The guest is Windows XP. The Synaptics touch pad works in the guest but the scroll region does not scroll. Device manager shows a HID-compliant mouse and VMware Pointing Device. Installed in the Mouse and other pointing devices category.

Has anyone been able to get the scroll region to work? I tried using the manufacturers drivers but VMware didn't like that and it gave me the BSOD repeatedly until I removed the Synaptic drivers. I tried to search the Web, FAQ's, and support site but didn't find any useful information.

I like using VMware Player but it is a bit of a pain to not have the scroll on the touchpad.

Thanks for the help.

[RParker]

OK, logically this will not work. The synaptics touch pad does NOT have a scroll region, the DRIVER does however, since it can detect WHERE your finger is on the device. Since the VM does not know about any such "synaptics" driver, there is no way to get this over to the Guest.

Therefore you will not get this to work. The touchpad will function like a basic mouse, that's it.

[kjoyce]

Thanks for the reply. I am not sure I completely agree with the information you have provided about the scroll region (virtual scrolling). The manufacturers help has the following information about scroll regions for the device.

If the Virtual Scrolling regions are gray and cannot be adjusted, ensure that Virtual Scrolling is enabled. To enable Virtual Scrolling, perform the following steps:
1. Select Virtual Scrolling in the menu tree to the left.
2. Select the desired Enable Scrolling check boxes.
3. Select Scrolling Region from the menu tree to return to this page

The VMware guest does seem to recognize the scroll region because it shows me a scroll bar when I am in the area on the touchpad that is defined as a scroll region and I try to use the scroll capability. This does not happen when I try the same steps in an area that is not defined as a scroll region.

This is why I was wondering if there is a way to set up the scrolling. I am sure there are a lot of people running VMware on a laptop and would like to use the touchpad's scroll function rather than having to use the windows scroll bar.

Thanks

[asatoran]

RParker, is correct. The virtual machine only "sees" a mouse, not a trackpad. Specifically, a two button mouse with a scrollwheel. Again NOT a trackpad. Therefore, you having trouble getting it to work becuse the Synaptic drivers will NOT load in the virtual machine. As far as the virtual machine is concerned, "there is no trackpad."

Your host physical computer does see the trackpad. Therefore, you install the Synaptic drivers in the host (if necessary) and adjust the scrolling feature on the host physical computer. When you use the scrolling feature, it will be passed to the virtual machine as long as you have VMWare Tools installed in the virtual machine.

[WoodyZ]

Thanks for the reply. I am not sure I completely agree with the information you have provided about the scroll region (virtual scrolling). The manufacturers help has the following information about scroll regions for the device.

It doesn't matter what the manufacturers help file has to say because the Virtual Machine does not see the Synaptics touchpad as a Synaptics touchpad it only see it as a normal mouse as was already stated so what don't you understand about that?

[WoodyZ]

When you use the scrolling feature, it will be passed to the virtual machine as long as you have VMWare Tools installed in the virtual machine.

I could be wrong and don't have time to rest however I do not think the Synaptics touchpad scrolling feature is going to be passed to the Virtual Machine regardless whether VMware Tools are installed or not.

[asatoran]

When you use the scrolling feature, it will be passed to the virtual machine as long as you have VMWare Tools installed in the virtual machine.

I could be wrong and don't have time to rest however I do not think the Synaptics touchpad scrolling feature is going to be passed to the Virtual Machine regardless whether VMware Tools are installed or not.

On my Dell, Sony and HP laptops, the trackpad scroll was passed to the virtual machine. I know I updated the Dell and HP trackpads with the Synaptics drivers. But I haven't used them for VM hosting in a while as they are not functional anymore. So from what I can remember, it would seem that Synaptics driver will pass cursor movement and a "generic" vertical scroll. Of course, the virtual machine will not be able to interpret any other function of the trackpad beyond that. As always, YMMV.

[RParker]

> The Synaptics touch pad works in the guest but the scroll region does not scroll.

OK, so the bottom line is the touch pad has a default zone, which is how it's detecting you click inside that zone. But the driver won't install without the hardware, therefore the DRIVER is the part that controls the scroll.

No driver no scroll. So maybe the hardware does have a default behavior as exibited by touching inside the zone and scroll bars activate, but there is no input, since the driver is missing, and can't reproduce the effect of moving your finger in the zone, therefore, as I stated in the beginning this WILL not work.

Touchpad is designed for hardware featureset which is not available in a guest.

3D hardware, VT, BIOS, Memory caching, and now Mouse scrolls for touchpad devices do not work in a VM guest.. ALL of these require hardware layer access, which to this point is not possible in a Virtual Machine OS.

[kjoyce]

My disagreement was to the Synaptics touchpad not having a scroll region. Which it does per the manufacturers iformation I posted.

I understand that the guest is using the VMware drivers for themouse/touchpad.

I am using the VMware tools on the guest and still see a scroll bar popup when I attempt to scroll in the scroll range of the touchpad while I am using the guest. That lead me to believe that VMware knew about the scroll region but something needed to be configured to allow the scroll to work. I checked the driver and the FAQ's but couldn't find anything to allow me to configure or change the settings.

This was the reason for me posting the question.

[kjoyce]

OK so everyone agrees that it won't work in the virtual machine and that it is functioning "as designed".

Is there a wish list or enhancement request process for VMware player? It's my understanding that Sun's VirtualBox does support touchpad scrolling but I would rather use VMware player.

Thanks for the feedback.

[RParker]

I doubt you will see any support for this, as synaptics is being phased out.. So probably not.

Besides this is more of a client issue than a VM Ware issue, since it's not really a Guest or Host problem, it's hardware. Sun works, that's a completely different product, and not to point out the obvious, but VM Ware is pretty much the leader in Virtualization, some of those "other" companies do things differently and maybe they cater to trying to get "polish" whereas VM Ware is more concerned with what's important like functionality.

The fact you can't use touchpad is limited, because I don't remember a post in over 3 years that even mentioned a problem until now. So that means you must be the minority of users that use touchpad. So I would say this is a dead end as far as touchpad goes.

[BillM]

Well kjoyce, just so you know you're not the only one in the world who would like Synaptics scrolling to work in Vmware, I came looking here for a solution too. I'm using Workstation 7. Frankly, I am a bit surprised at the responses. Not what I would expect from the "Gold standard in virtualization". There were some dated posts using earlier releases claiming they could get this to work with the PS2 Generic driver, but sadly, this didn't work for me.

[kjoyce]

Hi BillM,

I suspected there were others having the same issue That was how I found the post that VirtualBox was able to workaround the issue by providing a driver that is compatible. I work for a software company and know a lot of software consultants that are using laptops with VMware to demo products. I am surprised they haven't complained about the loss of functionality also.

I did try VMware server and it also has the issue. I also tried VirtualBox and the scroll region does work as someone else had reported. The only thing stopping me from switching to VirtualBox is my VMware image is having some issues running on VirtualBox getting the network adapter to install properly it keeps trying to use the VMware driver for the device. The performance seems to be the same as VMware Player and Server, so I am not losing any performance by switching. I would just be gaining the ability to have a scroll region .

Thanks

[BillM]

I agree kjoyce. I have several colleagues who would like to use Vmware on laptops for support purposes. A few are trying Sun's Virtualbox, and others are trying Vmware. Scrolling works fine with Virtualbox, but SUN's committment to this type of product has burned folks in the past. We'll have to wait and see what Oracle wants to do with it. Then again, you can't beat the price.

[vmware_usr]

3 years and still no resolving..

God damn, VMWare resolve THIS ASAP!

[farflungkiwi]

bump - I can't believe this isn't a feature yet!

[VABAV]

!!! SOLUTION !!!

I'll just put it here. windows 7 - Use Synaptics Touchpad Scroll in VMware Guest - Super User

It's for Workstation, don't know whether it works for Player, but I don't think it'll be very hard to modify it to do so.

[User91]

I found a little utility but it only works on multitouch synaptics touchpads, it enables 2 finger scrolling on any guest OS by sending MouseWheel scrolling, so if the Guest OS supports mouse wheel scrolling then it will support 2 finger scrolling, it is a paid program though, but works on any windows Distro, from xp to 8.1, its pretty simple to use as it is driver independent on the guest OS, you only need the synaptics drivers on the Host OS, heres the link http://www.multiswipe.com