Fusion 5.0.1, Snow Leopard, Spaces and Full Screen issue

[kinless]

Running the latest Snow Leopard (10.6.8), I run 12 desktop spaces, with a Full Screen'ed Win7 in Space #7 and Full Screen'ed WinXP in Space #9. I moved each of these from Space #12, where the Virtual Library resides.

Just upgraded my Fusion installation from 4.1.0 to 5.0.1.

Now I'm getting a rather annoying issue with the combination of Spaces/Full Screen. Once I switch to a different desktop space, if I go back to either virtual Win7 or WinXP (or switch between the two), the Mac's toolbar and dock become unhidden and appear over the virtual environment.

I have to select something from the toolbar menu (e.g. VMWare Fusion -> About VMWare Fusion -> close pop-up window) in order for the toolbar and dock to become hidden again, and this only lasts until I switch to a different space, then the Mac toolbar/dock comes back.

On a possibly-related issue, the "Hide Menubar in Full Screen" option doesn't work at all. Once I get the toolbar hidden, it will not re-appear if I hold my mouse at the top of the screen. The unhiding bug happens whether this option is checked or not.

Obviously a major bug introduced with this version. Tried restarting and re-installing, no luck. Will obviously need to be fixed in a maintenance release.

Does anyone have a fix or workaround in the meantime?

~j

(Screenshot of issue shown here)

[Dr_Gary]

I observed a very similar behavior after a clean install of Mountain Lion 10.8.1 and Fusion 5.01.

The only workaround that I found was to restore my VM’s and roll back to Fusion 4.1.3.

I am anxiously awaiting a 5.02 release for this and several other issues that I have experienced.

[cropas]

The same problem on my Snow Leopard.

[vanRijn]

Hey guys,

Sorry to hear about the problem you're hitting. I'll forward this on internally for someone to look into.

[mbeedubb]

Also having exactly the same problem and while not a huge showstopper, it's a bit infuriating to keep hiding the dock every time you switch spaces

[kdb1]

I have the exact same problem on OSX 10.6.8, upgraded from Fusion 3 to 5.0.1. When switching between spaces with a full screen VM, the OSX dock and toolbar gain focus and will not return focus to the VM unless I select some option such as View -> Hide Menu Bar in Full Screen. Going to VMWare -> About VMWare Fusion - > close popup also works. This was not an issue in Fusion 3. I downloaded a Fusion 5 trial to give it a shot, but I move around in spaces frequently and this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to have to close a popup every time I go to use the VM. Does a bug report or something need to be filed? I really hope this will be fixed in the next patch, otherwise I cannot justify a purchase.

[cyberatz]

Yup, i have the same issue since the 5.0.1 update on OS X (10.8.2).

It happens regardless of where the doc is located (bottom/left/right).

[kinless]

Not that I have to tell anyone this, but 5.0.2 did not fix this issue, at least for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it's still as annoying as ever.

What's the status on this?

[padarjohn]

Ditto. it's nice that there's a kludge to work around it, but still a PITA (Macbook Pro, MacOS 10.6.8)

Also it seems odd that a forum about Fusion doesn't work with Safari. I had to log in with Firefox to be able to post.

[Big_Banana]

May be a dead thread, but thie situation remains.  What is going on VMware???

[padarjohn]

Anyone? Anything?

Still waiting for a fix.

[Big_Banana]

Started a support ticket, the official line is you have to upgrade your OS.  Sad.  Be nice if they tested a bit, not like it is an obscure bug.

Supposedly he was going to update the KB articles, which I had to prompt him to do, sad again.

So, overall, I am out money for the Fusion upgrade and more to upgrade my OS.

Believe me, nothing in v5 is worth paying for. (or actually double paying for)

[RJIn]

Hello,

the issue is more related to snow leopard. That's what I think.

Why I am saying this is because fusion 5 is designed to work on Mountatin lion or lion (though it works on snow leopard) where full screen works differently.   For example as soon as we hit full screen in any application(default mac application too) the window moves to different spaces and then goes to full screen. But in snow leopard it doesn't work the same way which could be the reason. 

In fusion 5, full screen depends upon the host os as Mac OS X (lion and mountail lion) themself came with full screen feature in their applicition and Fusion 5 works the same way.

[kinless]

It's obvious the developers got lazy and just don't feel like fixing this issue, even though a number of people still use 10.6 Snow Leopard for their work environments. They haven't even updated Fusion for months, even though many bugs are still present.

This is probably the last version of Fusion I'll be using before switching over to Parallels. They continue to refuse a fix for their poor implementation of Full Screen in 10.8 Mountain Lion, which Parallels addressed in their product a long time ago. Sad to say, since I've been with Fusion from the beginning, but I can no longer use a product that hampers productivity.

[vanRijn]

Hey guys, I'm so sorry nobody has gotten back in touch with you about this issue. I will forward your message on internally again. There's quite a few comments on this thread... could you guys sum up exactly what problems you're seeing? The more specific and detailed the reproduction steps, the easier it will be for someone to investigate. Thanks.

[ColoradoMarmot]

That probably makes sense.

And to a point in another post, since Apple has stopped supporting 10.6, I'm surprised that any security-conscious business would continue to use it.

[kinless]

It's not hard to replicate. My original post at the top explains it all in detail, and is echoed by everyone else here having this issue. In 10.6, using Spaces to move to/between any full screen VMware virtual environment causes the menubar and dock to show on top. According to Big_Banana, the developers are basically saying "Not our problem, upgrade your software" even though the System Requirements for Fusion 5 continue to state 10.6.7 or higher. Basically that says to me they still have an obligation to fix 10.6 bugs, regardless of whether Apple has stopped supporting the OS. If the developers aren't going to fix 10.6 bugs, especially one as annoying as this, then they need to adjust their System Requirements.

Off topic, I've also been waiting for VMWare to add in the option (when using 10.7 or 10.8) to choose between Snow Leopard style Full Screen and (Mountain) Lion style Full Screen. That issue is referenced here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/340401?start=0&tstart=0 and has received strong support. Although completely unrelated to the bug described here on this thread, the lack of full screen options has been hounding me at work for over a year. Parallel's software offers the option to choose your type of full screen, which alone is enough to make me switch on the next upgrade cycle.

[Big_Banana]

Support Request Confirmation Number:

13268760801

Issue description:

If I use spaces to "change" between my guest and host, the Mac dock stays visible in the guest.

My notes:

This did not have this happen in v4, only after I updated Fusion to v5.   I have not updated OSX, therefore, this is not a direct Apple issue or  it would have pre-existed.  If this is deemed "normal" behaviour, I  would like to be refunded my money.

Their notes:

As per the query we determined that this issue is not of vmware Fusion ,  this has to be refered to Apple.VMware Fusion is an application which  allows you to run windows on mac and it has no control over the dock  which is a part of Mac OS X.We suggest you to kindly contact Apple  regarding the same.

[kdb1]

Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper wrote:

Hey guys, I'm so sorry nobody has gotten back in touch with you about this issue. I will forward your message on internally again. There's quite a few comments on this thread... could you guys sum up exactly what problems you're seeing? The more specific and detailed the reproduction steps, the easier it will be for someone to investigate. Thanks.

Thanks for checking in again. The problem still persists, and the issue is still as described above. Not sure what else we can say? All you have to do is full screen a VM in one space, switch to another space, then switch back to the VM space. The OSX dock and toolbars will not give focus to fusion unless some action, as stated above (like closing a dialogue box), is done. This issue has persisted for quite a long time, and is extremely irritating. It's not an Apple issue as far as I understand, as a previous poster has pointed out that this was (and still is not) an issue in older versions of fusion. My guess would be that vmware is using newer API's available in Lion and Mountain Lion which advertise backward compatibility, and the developers refuse to add a special case for OSX 10.6.8.

[kdb1]

dlhotka wrote:

That probably makes sense.

And to a point in another post, since Apple has stopped supporting 10.6, I'm surprised that any security-conscious business would continue to use it.

I'm not sure where you are getting this information from? As far as I know, Apple does not publish support lifecycle information with any consistency, and I still regularly receive updates on OSX 10.6.8. In particular, security updates are still issued to 10.6.8 in parallel with Lion and Mountain Lion.