Fusion 6 and MacBook Pro Retina support - still useless

[parallelsORfusi]

Ok - so Fusion 5 and Retina Display was poor.  Either everything was tiny, or a manual workaround made the mouse movements in Win7 practically unusable and also certain icons still remained tiny in certain places within Fusion.  And I had to apply and remove this workaround each time I needed to go in to Fusion.  This was no good.

Just upgraded to V6 and it's the same - ie, tiny or very pixelated (when it's perfect in OS X) graphics.  So, from what I can see nothing has changed.

So, if you're upgrading for better Retina support, think again.  Unless, however, there is something that I've missed (quite possible); un which case fill me in please.

[samwilli2002]

That was my main reason for upgrading. I chose Fusion 6 Pro. Not sure if that matters. Have you upgraded the vmtools yet?

[parallelsORfusi]

I have no idea - I did the 'usual' upgrade, so perhaps not.

What's vmtools and does this need a separate update?

Also, if retina working well on 'Pro'?

All I want is a the same good quality resolution I get on OSx (Display is set for 'best for display') when I switch to Win 7.

[parallelsORfusi]

Ok, found 'vmware' tools and I'm now doing an update - selected the 'repair' option.  Hope this works.

This made no change at all.  Fusion makes Win7 use a resolution of 2880x1638 and no mater what I do this cannot be changed.

So, back to either tiny or pixelated graphics which makes Fusion 6 a worthless upgrade from my point of view / use.

Message was edited by: parallelsORfusion

[ColoradoMarmot]

I'm not sure why you're seeing that.  I can resize the window to anything I want, and the text looks just fine (much better than the competition actually).

Is this a freshly created Fusion virtual machine, or one converted from another source?

[vanRijn]

Did you check the Virtual Machine > Settings > Display checkboxes for "use full resolution for Retina display" and "automatically adjust user interface size in Windows"? You'll also need to update your tools to the latest version via Virtual Machine > Install (or upgrade) VMware Tools.

[parallelsORfusi]

Hi vanRijn; I did the vmtools repair - was 'repair' the right option - I have the retina and auto adjust selected and no matter what I do I cannot get the VM screen to show any resolution except the maximum.

dlhotka; I had v5 since day 1; so approx 11 months ago.  VM did a few changes for me 3 weeks ago after the virtual machine died.  V6 was an upgrade on top of v5.

Any other ideas?

[vanRijn]

Hi parallelsORfusion,

No, repair isn't the right option. Can you uninstall VMware Tools via Control Panel in the VM, reboot, then do the Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools bit again?

[parallelsORfusi]

Damn - tried to reinstall it and now the whole virtual machines seems broken and I can only see a black screen.  It's been like this for 30 mins and I can't restart it!!

Seems pretty poor that you upgrade to v6 and need to manually update the vmtools and it crashes.  Not helped by hopeless online help.

If I 'cancel the vmware tools installation' it still doesn't work.

A very frustrating experience so far.

At this rate I'm considering throwing the Mac away and going back to a Dell!

[WoodyZ]

parallelsORfusion wrote:  Not helped by hopeless online help.

A very frustrating experience so far.

At this rate I'm considering throwing the Mac away and going back to a Dell!

With comments such as this I can recall the first thing I said to you in your first post a year ago yesterday, "With all your negativism about the Mac, why did you even bother to purchase one!?" and I'd strongly suggest you go back to using a Dell and give the Mac to someone that actually knows how to use it!

[parallelsORfusi]

I did but another Dell but that machine had a failed hard drive and it was easier to switch back to the Mac rather than spend a day rebuilding it.  That was 3 months' ago and the Mac has largely been ok since.

Maybe wanting a machine that is stable is simply too much - I'm not an Apple fan-boy nor a PC fan - I want best of both worlds, am prepared to pay for it and would like an easier life and for things to work reliably.  If something is not right, then yes it gets me frustrated because I need these things to work to do my job.

Your comment doesn't move things forward for me or anyone else.

[WoodyZ]

'm not an Apple fan-boy nor a PC fan - I want best of both worlds, am prepared to pay for it and would like an easier life and for things to work reliably.

If you can't resolve issues yourself and you don't mind paying for it then you may want to consider taking your Mac to a professional and get some help with it.

Your comment doesn't move things forward for me or anyone else.

Well neither do your comments I commented on!

[vanRijn]

parallelsORfusion wrote:

Damn - tried to reinstall it and now the whole virtual machines seems broken and I can only see a black screen.  It's been like this for 30 mins and I can't restart it!!

Seems pretty poor that you upgrade to v6 and need to manually update the vmtools and it crashes.  Not helped by hopeless online help.

Sorry to hear you're having problems. I'll try to help....

1) Did you uninstall Tools cleanly and reboot your VM first? Did this work? Were you able to use the VM after rebooting? Some things won't work as well (that's why we have VMware Tools), but you should be able to login and interact with the VM.

2) Did you install Tools? Is this where you're hitting the black screen problem? I seem to recall that some machines had a problem where the VM screen would go black when Tools changed the video driver (happens when you uninstall, install, or reinstall Tools). Maybe you're hitting that problem? You might try powering off the VM and starting it up again to see if that fixes the problem for you. I don't think anything has crashed, necessarily, it's just that you can't see the contents of the VM, right?

Also, to address your other comment, you shouldn't need to manually update VMware Tools when you upgrade to Fusion 6. You said you had a problem and I was trying to help. Updating Tools is one of the things that you normally need to (or at the very least should) do when you upgrade Fusion. I was just trying to help you overcome any potential problems that might have been caused by doing "update" instead of "uninstall and then install".

Anyway, let me know how you're making out over there. I'd still like to help you get this working. =:)

[parallelsORfusi]

Hi - I upgraded from v5 to v6, so the install wasn't clean.

It did work at first, though the resolution was tiny or pixelated; neither ideal.

I ran the repair option on VMWare tools and that didn't change anything.

I then uninstalled Tools but now I'm stuck in limbo with the black screen that you described.

I can click "install VMWare Tools" but it doesn't install and the screen stays black.  I can 'force stop' the the installation, restart the guest VM and uninstall the tools, but the screen stays black.  I force stop and get I'm back to square 1.

I get this message but I can't find the virtual CD-Rom drive or the setup.exe file

[vanRijn]

Okay, so you got the black screen when you uninstalled Tools, right? At this point, do Virtual Machine > Shut Down. Then power the VM back on and install Tools. You're not going to get anywhere until you power off the VM and are able to see what's going on in the guest.

[parallelsORfusi]

Hi, when I power down the VM and restart it, the screen remains black.  This is what I see after trying to install tools again ...

[vanRijn]

Wow. That's a new one.

[parallelsORfusi]

Hi - it's fixed.

No matter how many times you restart the VM with my particular issue it will not work.  You need to 'force quit' the VM and then close the entire mac and restart.

I received a very helpful call from VM Fusion support team who checked all my settings and they are correct.  In their words, "it's a very rare issue with Win7 64 bit".

For what it's worth, and after checking settings during the call, I can confirm that v6 does not offer retina support any better than v5, and from my point of view it's not what I expected.  So, if you want better retina support and you're a v5 user don't bother upgrading.

I use the OSx display setting "best for retina" and hoped that I could have the same point size etc in Win 7 via VM Fusion and with a very clear picture quality.  V6 cannot do this.  Instead you can have the same setting as OXs with a very pixelated image or you can set the retina option in VM ware and then make the display 150% larger via Win Control Panel and the Display settings.

My ideal, ie to mirror my OSx setting, would be a slightly larger resolution still as 150% is still a little too small.

Also, and confirmed during the call, no matter what my display resolution settings in Win 7, Fusion ignores them and always immediately resets to the full retina setting (with out without the "Automatically adjust user interface size in Windows" selected) which is 2868x1638.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Keep in mind that Fusion is limited by what Win7 can do (and it doesn't do retina).  Win 8 does.

[parallelsORfusi]

Damn - so I'm back to a tiny or crappy pixelated Win 7 environment or I have to buy Win8!

I think that VM Fusion should really make this clear.  Would have saved a lot of aggro.