Fusion 3.1.2/Win7 32bit/Live Meeting --> vanishing mouse pointer?!

[KeithVM]

Hi all,

I'm a long-time Fusion user but infrequent poster here because, frankly, Fusion is pretty solid and easy to use.  However this is an interesting quirk.

To summarize the quirk:

When 3D Acceleration is enabled in the VM settings, and regardless of which theme is in use (Aero vs non-Aero), if the user hosts a Live Meeting and shares his desktop in part or in full, depending on the application being run and shared via Live Meeting he may experience a vanishing/reappearing mouse pointer.  The mouse pointer, when visible, will flicker fairly constantly.  Disabling 3D acceleration in the VM settings solves the vanishing mouse pointer problem, but the pointer will still flicker during the Live Meeting.  I've not seen either of these mouse issues outside of Live Meeting.

I've done a bit of Googling but have come across no solid answers on this one.  Googling for live meeting mouse disappears brings up some interesting hits however; seems this is an issue across various virtualization solutions.

Some back-story

I run a Windows 7 VM (32bit) at the office for every-day Windows office usage.  The host machine is an iMac11,2 with 16GB memory (2GB for the guest), running OS X 10.6.6.  VMTools in the VM is up to date, and all Windows 7 updates have been applied.  3D acceleration is enabled in the VM settings and the Windows 7 Aero theme is in use.

I frequently have to do Live Meetings.  We utilize Live Meeting 2007 and Communicator; I'll pull multiple people into a chat and then share the entire desktop with those people via Live Meeting. If you've ever done this you'll know that when you share your desktop, in whole or in part, Live Meeting bumps the theme down to Windows 7 Basic, but this doesn't seem to matter.  What ultimately does matter is that 3D acceleration is enabled in the VM settings.

I'm a developer and do work with Java and various Java apps.  Yesterday I did a Live Meeting, and shared my entire desktop to demo this Java app we have.  Mind you, this app is perfectly well-behaved in Live Meeting in installations of Win7 on real hardware.  However in my guest, any time the mouse was over this particular app it would vanish and reappear randomly and flicker constantly when it was visible. (The flickering happens regardless of where the mouse is on screen on the guest.)  Oh, I also set "Always optimize mouse for games" in the VM settings, but I tried the other settings as well and it makes no difference.  I've also tried uninstalling/reinstalling Tools, and not using the VMware Tools mouse drivers -- none of this made a difference.

The only change that did make a difference was disabling 3D Acceleration.  Obviously this kills the Aero experience which I'm fine with for now.   😉

So, any thoughts on this one?  Unfortunately, as much as I'd love to get away from Windows altogether, not using it or Live Meeting is not (yet) an option.

Thanks,

Keith