Mini Windows in Virtual Machine Library Do Not Update?

[vmxmr]

The title says it all:

The mini windows that appear in the VMware Fusion Virtual Machine Library window do not update to show the current display of the guest virtual machine. They used to update in earlier versions of VMware Fusion. You could use it to track progress, watch some activity, or look for a dialog box. If you suspend an affected guest VM, then its mini window displays the suspended view, even after the guest VM is activated and its display changes.

Some guests seem to update at times, but then they are frozen again and do not update their mini windows.

Example problem mini windows:

The Windows 7 (32-bit) guest VM mini window in the Virtual Machine Library window shows the login screen even after logging in. The Windows desktop does not show up in the mini window.

The OS X 10.11 El Capitan guest shows a black mini window that never changes.

The Ubuntu Linux 15.04 MATE (64-bit) mini window seems to update at times, but most of the time it is frozen in a random state.

The same is true for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

All guests are configured for Full Screen view (which is why the mini windows are helpful).

Host: mid-2011 iMac, core i7, 16 Gbytes RAM, OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks

VMware Fusion 8.0.2

Is this a known bug? Are other people seeing the same thing?

[kalee1]

I am seeing the same thing on my system as well.  My host specs are very close to yours (running on mid-2012 MBP, same OS version, same Fusion version), and I am also running a Windows 7 guest VM.  I have become used to watching the mini window to know when a long-running action was finished in my VM, so that I could do some work in the host environment while the VM was busy.

[manman13]

Hi,

Welcome to VMware Fusion forum~

We have reported this issue to our dev team, we'll update our comments asap if there is any update on this issue.

For this issue, suggest you make a fresh on the thumbnail firstly~

If you have more than one VMs in the Library window, you can click another VM and re-click the VM that you want to check, then the thumbnail is correct.

Or if you only have one VM, you can click VIRTUAL MACHINES folder and re-click the VM.

Hope helpful~

[vmxmr]

I would appreciate responses from others who are seeing the same issue where the mini Windows in the Virtual Machine Library do not update in real time. They used to show a miniature version the current screen as it changes - progress bars, dialog boxes appearing, etc. etc. etc. Thanks in advance for your contributions.

VMware Support wants to put the related Support Request on hold, because they cannot replicate it.

[krayzee]

I have observed the same issue on all three of my platforms (Yosemite, Mavericks and on El Capitan).   Still persists with Fusion pro 8.1.0.

I really miss the feature to view mini versions of virtual machine, I use it all the time.  It animates as before if I toggle to thumbnail view then back, but freezes when I jump to the vm and back out to Mac OS (with the virtual machine library window in view).  I noticed this issue minutes after upgrading from Fusion 7.

[Jerry_G]

I just updated from 8.0.1 to 8.1 and have observed the same issue on two different computers.

Tech support had me do a complete uninstall and then re install. Didn't fix the issue.

Reverting back to 8.0.1 resolves the issue, but re-introduces some issues I had with 8.0.1 which is why I went to 8.1.

This is absurd. VMWare introduced a bug that appears to affect many. But because they can't reproduce it, they don't want to fix it. Very bad customer support.

This makes me want to try Parallels.

[vmxmr · Accepted solution]

I happened to notice this old thread that I started.

I am pleased to report that the problem has been fixed for me for some time. I noticed that the mini windows started working again after an update, but I cannot say which one. I know that the mini windows were working correctly in at least some (most? all?) versions of VMware Fusion 10, and also works in 11.0.2. I upgraded from Fusion 10 to Fusion 11 this morning.