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HanSooloo
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Erratic / slow mouse movement after Version 5 upgrade

Working in Unity mode on an MBA with Core i7 and 4GB RAM on Lion 10.7.4.  Happens with pretty much any app.  Hard to say what triggers the condition, maybe modal dialog boxes, e.g., Save, etc.

Mouse starts moving really slowly, as if it got trapped in sand.  Lags behind actual physical mouse movement.  I see that the host CPU usage goes to almost 33% with nothing else running when the mouse issue starts.

Tried disabling mouse detection for gaming mode to no avail.

Anyone else experienced this?  Any potential fixes?

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shortypowers
Contributor
Contributor

I'm experiencing this problem as well on an MBP with Windows apps in Unity mode. I upgraded to from VMware Fusion 5.0 to 5.0.1 & VMware tools 9.2.1 this morning in hopes that it would help, but it is still an issue. You can improve the issue slightly by maxing out the mouse speed to the maximum in the Windows control panel. Let me know if you find out any other tricks.

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amzhang0922
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

what is the OS of your VM?

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HanSooloo
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Windows XP Service Pack 3 with all the MS Updatrs applied.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

I don't seem to be able to repro this. Probably you should consider doing a manual uninstall and reinstall of the VMware Tools.

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FranHoey
Contributor
Contributor

Any update on this?

I'm getting exactly the same issue on my 1 year old MBP with 8gb Ram (4 given to virtual OS). I get the problem on fresh install of Windows 8 and upgraded vm (from Fusion 3) Windows 7.

Full Screen mode is fine.

Thanks,

Fran

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HanSooloo
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It seems to be working OK now.

Even though the upgrade to Fusion 5 should have upgraded my VMware Tools, and even though I thought I saw them being upgraded, I had yet another update that came through last night.  *After* that upgrade, erratic mouse movement is gone.

Will monitor for a few more days and let everyone know.

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HanSooloo
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I take it back Smiley Sad  still same slow mouse behavior with dialog boxes.

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Brad_Leggat
Contributor
Contributor

I see this is flagged as "answered" but is sill not answered. I am having the same problem on Fusion 501 with WinXP SP3. The very same VM was working fine on Fusion 4. Problem since upgrade to 5 and 501. Uninstalled and re-installed VM Tools a number of times. Still a problem. Any suggestions?

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Hank4162
Contributor
Contributor

Likewise, I am experiencing erratic mouse movement after upgrade to Fusion Version 5. I updated to 5.01 with no improvement noted. Sometimes it is so bad that it is hard to click on buttons - the mouse doesn't move then overshoots and winds up above or below the button. I have to keep slowly moving the mouse, wait until it moves on screen, then nudge it more, wait, and repeat until it finally rests where I want it.

The only way to recover when the mouse gets real erratic is to shut down the VM, close Fusion, re-open Fusion, and turn on the VM. That fixes it for a short while then it gets progressively worse as time advances and I have to repeat.

This is happening on all of my windows VM's (Windows 2003 x64 Server, Windows 2008 R2 x64, XP Professional x86).

Running (only one VM at a time) on Late 2009 MacBook Pro, 8 GB RAM with 4GB dedicated to the VM, OS X Lion (10.7.4). There have been no software changes to VM's except for updating VMWare Tools and no changes to my MBP with the exception of upgrading from Fusion Version 4 to 5.

Does anyone know if a VM that has been upgraded to Version 5 can be downgraded back to Version 4? As it stands, Version 5 doesn't appear ready for prime time yet.

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mymilkexpired
Contributor
Contributor

I'm experiencing this same issues. Im quite literally about to dispute the charge for the uprgade on my CC because of all the problems with the v5 update.

The frequency of slow / erratic mouse movement I expereince makes it nearly impossible to get anything accomplished with tools that Im running in my VM.

- v5.0.1 update has been applied

- VM tools have been updated.

- VM tools have been uninstalled, reboot and reinstalled. Problems continue to persist.

- Happening in a Win7 and Win8 VM.

Knock knock VMware... Get your act together.

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amzhang0922
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I tried on my MBP, Fusion 5.0.1, newly install a windows server 2012 vm. I installed tools and switch to Unity mode.  Launch Paint, IE, Calculator apps.., did some clicks on the apps.. or save manipulations,  but I can't  reproduce the mouse issue which all people mentioned above. 

Who can tell me which apps are you using when the mouse issue appears? Or who can provide me the reproduce steps?

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mymilkexpired
Contributor
Contributor

Update to my original posting.

I disabled 3D Acceleration and so far this seems to have solved some of the mouse slowness and erratic movement. Just FYI incase others would like to give it a go.

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mymilkexpired
Contributor
Contributor

I've experienced the issue with the following applications:

- Outlook 2010

- Visio 2010

- Connectwise PSA

- Labtech

- Internet Explorer

- VNC

- Remote Desktop

I strongly believe its not a single application issue but an underlying video rendering issue. The mouse movement is slow and choppy but the clicks, even when 'delayed' by the movement issue, are spot on and responsive.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Did you upgrade the virtual hardware, and also ensure that VMWare tools are also current?

You can also try changing the mouse settings from 'automatic game detection' to the other options and see if that solves it.

it would be interesting to know if this also happens when not in unity mode.

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mymilkexpired
Contributor
Contributor

dlhotka wrote:

Did you upgrade the virtual hardware, and also ensure that VMWare tools are also current?

You can also try changing the mouse settings from 'automatic game detection' to the other options and see if that solves it.

it would be interesting to know if this also happens when not in unity mode.

Yes and Yes. I even went so far as to building a whole new base VM. With Windows 7 or 8 and VM tools installed I was able to duplicate the problem in short order.

I didn't bother changing the mouse settings based on other feedback in this thread. FWIW I've had 100% stability with 3D acceleration disabled. I'll get around to turning acceleration back on and dumb down the mouse heuristics and see what happens.

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Hank4162
Contributor
Contributor

Likewise, I upgraded the hardware and VM tools. The erratic mouse issue exists in all applications I use. It is so bad in Visual Studio 2010 that my productivity is shot to, well, you know where. Since I spend most of my work day using Visual Studio, it's may just seem worse than other apps.

I agree with other commentors that it is a video rendering issue. In addition to erratic mouse behavior I do see video glitches (rectangles of screen that are delayed in updating when scrolling, dialog boxes ghosting when moving, pieces of dialog boxes remaining in old location when the dialog box has been moved, etc..). I didn't have these issues in Fusion 4.

I don't run in unity mode and I've tried all mouse settings relevant to gaming. Nothing helps. I'll try disabling 3D acceleration tomorrow per another commenter's suggestion and see if that helps.

With regards to steps to reproduce the problem:

1. Start virtual machine

2. Open any application

3. Observe that after a short period of use, mouse movement becomes erratic and gets progressively worse until the VM is entirely unusable.

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Pieter1234
Contributor
Contributor

Exact same issue in Visual Studio 2010 after opening a File Dialog.

Running OS X 10.8.1 on Mac Mini.

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mymilkexpired
Contributor
Contributor

I can add that I've finally started getting real error messages from the VMtools... This may not be related to the mouse issues as I've been working in full screen mode when this happens.

When running full screen and switching between spaces VMtools is crashing with the following error:

Screen Shot 2012-09-07 at 10.14.27 AM.png

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tkarpinski
Contributor
Contributor

same behavior here.  noticed it during preview, 5.0 and 5.0.1  would be happy to send any logs that would help.

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