Bug: Fusion 8, Win7 VM, USB3, trackpad clicking not working (MacBook Pro)

[johncenix]

Hello,

I recently upgraded to Fusion 8 on my Macbook Pro (2014, non-retina). I upgraded the hardware version in my Win7 VM and also installed Intel's USB3 drivers after enabling USB3 support in the settings. I also updated VMware Tools.

I now encounter a problem where the trackpad clicks do not register at all in the virtual machine. The cursor is tracked fine - I can see Windows UI items highlighting as I hover over them, but clicking does not work.

If I downgrade the USB settings to USB2, clicking works again. Everything works fine in my Win8.1 VM too.

Is this perhaps related to the newly supported Force Touch pass-through? But my MBP doesn't have Force Touch to begin with...

However, on my desktop iMac, clicking (with an actual USB mouse though) works after the same upgrade steps (Fusion 8, USB3 in a Win7 VM).

To summarize:

Fusion 8, Win7 VM, USB3 enabled, Macbook Pro: Trackpad clicking does not work.

Fusion 8, Win7 VM, USB2 enabled, Macbook Pro: Trackpad clicking works.

Fusion 8, Win8.1 VM, USB3 enabled, Macbook Pro: Trackpad clicking works.

Fusion 8, Win7 VM, USB3 enabled, iMac: USB mouse clicking works.

[user160104]

I'm seeing the exact same observable with a similar configuration.

All steps and configuration is the same, save the following;

  * Macbook Pro Retina

  * I'm using an external trackpad (the machine is docked)

My test summary:

  * Fusion 8, Win7 VM, USB3 enabled, Macbook Pro, External Trackpad: Trackpad clicking does not work.

  * Fusion 8, Win7 VM, USB2 enabled, Macbook Pro, External Trackpad: Trackpad clicking works.

[admin]

Hi user160104user160104,

Can you please attach the support bundle from Help -> Collect Support Information. Thanks.

[tliugogo]

Hi,

For Win7 VM, to use USB3.0 controller, it needs to install the intel driver. In VM -> Settings -> USB&Bluetooth panel. You can see the note:

Using USB devices with a USB 3.0 controller may require additional drivers to be installed in the virtual machine. The USB 3.0 driver for this virtual machine can be downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/go/dl_intel_usb3_driver.

Hope it's helpful.

Thanks,

Tim

[user160104]

The drivers are installed.  I followed the procedure covered in the KB number 2128105 explicitly. (VMware KB:    USB 3.0 support for Windows 7 virtual machine in VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion‌)

Oddly and interestingly, the loss of the trackpad click functionality occurred while Windows was installing drivers.  (Again, the trackpad //movement// continued to work - it was only the clicking that stopped functioning.) After completing step 8 in the KB, Windows started finding/installing the drivers for the hardware and it was somewhere during this process that I lost the ability to use the trackpad. I waited for all the drivers to finish and then proceeded (by using the keyboard only) to reboot the VM. The click of the trackpad continued not to work after the reboot.

I then shut down, reverted the USB config to USB 2, rebooted, and now I'm able to use the machine again. (Albeit without any access to my USB3 HDDs.)

[user160104]

Is there a method that I can use to deliver the support bundle directly to you instead of posting on the forum?

[admin]

Hi,

You can upload it to our ftp site.

• Go to https://ftpsite.vmware.com.
• Enter this information:
  Username: inbound
  Password: inbound
• Ensure that HTML is selected.
• Click Login.
• Click New Directory (say Fusion8-trackpad) and upload.

Please let me know once it is uploaded.

[user160104]

The support bundle has been uploaded to Fusion8-trackpad-user160104.

[admin]

Hi,

Thank you for the logs. I tried to locally reproduce but could not. I have gone through various virtual machines. I assume  *******.**llc.local is the virtual machine in question. Please confirm the same.

- There is a software KARABINER installed in your system. Is it possible to uninstall karabiner and see if you still have the problem?

- At the time of collecting the above logs, is the virtual machine is set to 2.0 compatibility? Can you please collect the logs after the following steps?

• Power off the vm.
• Set the vm in usb 3.0 compatibility
• Power on and install intel driver. (If you already did not have this installed)
• Power off the vm and add below lines to the .vmx file that can be found under the virtual machine folder( Users/<username>/Virtualization/Machines/Active/Host/<virtual machine name>/<virtual machine name>.vmx)

       usb.analyzer.enable = "TRUE"

       log.throttleBytesPerSec = "0"

• Power on the vm.
• Please collect the support logs when the trackpad stops working. Also please attach the snapshot of fully opened device manager from inside the windows guest. You can upload the logs to the same location as before.

Thanks

[user160104]

Thanks very much for looking into this.

Yes, lastname_i.*****.local is the VM of interest.

Yes, the support logs were collected after I had reverted compatibility back to USB 2.0 so that I could get click functionality restored.

I will try again without KARABINER.

You say "collect the support logs when trackpad stops working".  My expectation is that the trackpad is not going to work as soon as I power on the machine (as the Intel drivers are already installed and I lost the functionality at that point in the process).  Do you want me to capture the support logs at that point - with the VM still running - or should I power down first?

[admin]

You can power on the vm, try to use the trackpad, power off the vm(without switching to usb 2.0) and collect the logs. Before powering off to collect the logs, please take a snapshot of usbview.exe/windows device manager from inside the guest. This is to see if the virtual usb mouse plugged in to the 3.0 controller is in "Started" state. Thank you.

[user160104]

I've solved this.  (Thanks for the great support ravoorir - I'd have given up if it were not for your encouragement.)

Firstly, it was not Karabiner.  (Which, by the way, I use to map Ctrl+C to Command+C in OS X to allow me to use my now-permanently-engrained Windows cut and paste keyboard shortcuts in both OSes.)  I shut down the VM, uninstalled Karabiner (using the functionality within the app), restarted OS X, set the VM to USB 3 compatibility, booted the VM, and saw the same problem signature - inability to click using the trackpad.

As ravoorir mentioned the Device Manager in comment 8 - as well as the fact that I wanted to check to make sure that the Intel driver was installed - I opened this to have a look.  (Using keyboard shortcuts only, mind you, as I don't have a clickable mouse.)  Things mostly looked normal - save the fact there was a top-level category "Other Devices", with a single device in it that was "VMware Device".  (Note the exact names in quotes are from memory - they could be slightly off in exact string content.)  I opened up this device, found it not to have a driver installed, hit enter on the "update driver" button and waited.  A driver was found (whether from Windows Update or on the local OS I do not know) and I now have click functionality restored.

For anyone needing to do this themselves in the future, a few notes about navigating to do this with the keyboard only.  Use the command key to open the start menu, type "Device Manager" in the search box in the start menu to search for this, use tab to get into the device manager list, use the arrow keys to navigate up and down the list and to expand and collapse the sections, the return key to select / open the details about the device, and the tab and return keys to move around and select items within a window.

[admin]

Hi user,

I am glad you resolved this. After Intel drivers are installed and the windows reboots, windows should automatically install the driver for device, matching the usb 3.0 controller with the installed Intel drivers. After this, Windows should install Microsoft's inbox drivers for VMware virtual usb mouse as well. For some reason, this needed a manual trigger. We will investigate this further and update the documentation if need be.

In future, for any such issues, please make sure that the usb 3.0 controller is in "started" state in windows device manager and ensure that there is no yellow bang on any device. Please let us know if you face any more issues. Thank you.

- Ruchira.

[Italy241119]

Thanks a lot to user160104:

I had the same problem (mouse clicks failed after installing the usb3 drivers Intel(R)_USB_3.0_eXtensible_Host_Controller_Driver_5.0.4.43_v2) on Windows 7
and thanks to his instructions I solved !!

Open control panel -> device manager -> search "VMware Device" with a question mark->search new drivers.