Keyboard not functioning in virtual environment

[dbonsall]

Hello,

I just purchased and installed VMWare Fusion on a Mac Pro running Lion.  I set up a virtual environment with Snow Leopard Server, but my keyboard does not respond within the virtual environment.  It would be as if I didn't have the keyboard plugged into my computer, if it were happening on the real computer.  It was working initially within the virtual environment after I first installed the OS, as I was able to type in the various setup info, like username and password, but it is not working now.  I have searched throughout this forum, and can find no solution.  I was hoping that someone here could point me in the right direction.

I do notice that when I bring up System Profiler, that no keyboard is listed under the USB devices, so I don't know if that's related to the problem or not.

Any assistance in this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dennis

[SvenGus]

Same problem here, with Fusion 4.1: I installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server, and everything went well; then (after installing a sound driver, but that is irrelevant) I rebooted, and wasn't able to login anymore: no response from the keyboard.

BTW, this only seems to affect the Server edition of Snow Leopard: and, IIRC, Mac OS X Server also doesn't automatically recognize Bluetooth keyboards, requiring an USB keyboard during setup on real hardware; but the setup in a VM went well: it's only after a reboot that it doesn't work anymore...

[SvenGus]

... So, I reinstalled Mac OS X 10.6 Server in a new VM, and this time I also enabled automatic login as soon as possible: sofar, the keyboards (wireless and wired) have worked well in the VM, also across reboots.

Maybe it could be an intermittent problem, who knows...

[dbonsall]

I also recreated the virtual environment.  The keyboard worked until I installed VMware tools.  At that point, the keyboard would no longer work.  Once I uninstalled VMware tools, the keyboard worked again.  Uninstalling is not that easy, though, when you cannot type in your password to uninstall (I used the keyboard viewer to enter my password).

Of course, without VMware tools, I cannot increase my resolution to above 1024*768.

Dennis

[SvenGus · Accepted solution]

Strange, indeed: I installed the VMware Tools also the second time, and it worked.

You could try again, and enable automatic login this time...

[dbonsall]

I reinstalled VMware tools into the same virtual environment I had previously removed them from, and this time the keyboard continued to work.

Thanks,

Dennis