Please reply if you bought VMWare 3 and want your money back

[object]

I don't think I'm the only one realizing that the latest release is pretty much unusable.

I am a software developer and I understand that software can have issues. But this is not a piece of software that has some issues, this is a piece of software that just plain and simple doesn't work.

Please reply to this message if you want your money back. I think VMWare needs to understand that we are not their beta testers and we have real work to do.

[23mkl]

there are a lot of reasons to be frustrated. The software VMWare is not even a beta version. I think a have to go back to Parallels. I'm not a frustrated user but a total disappointed one.

[Kioniman]

I've used Fusion for the last couple of years simply to enable me to run some inhouse (company) software that is not available as a Mac programme and also so I can use my old Epson DX3800 in scanner mode - I've lost the software installation disc for Mac and can't find the drivers for it anywhere. I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few weeks ago and had no issues with Fusion 2 but since I upgraded to Fusion 3 I've been tearing my hair out. Apart from slowing down my Mac, a major frustration is that F3 won't let you allocate less than 40Gb to the Virtual Machine. Although I only need about 4Gb, I have to devote almost 20% of my hard disk for less than 1% of my needs - which now makes Fusion an expensive luxury. In addition, I can no longer use my scanner because it tells me there isn't enough space on the hard disk - even tho' there's almost 37Gb available! I was perfectly happy with the previous version but F3 has been a complete waste of money - I'd have been better off buying a new scanner and getting my old IBM laptop out to run my Windows software. I agree - unless somebody can advise me how I can allocate significantly less disk space and find a way to get my scanner working very soon, it's money back time and back to Parallels Desktop for me.

[Guddler]

object, just a suggestion, but if you have 3D enabled, does your problem go away if you disable it? Before you say it, I realise this is not an acceptable solution (if it works) since 3D is a MAJOR selling point of the product that the company uses and they even suggest that it plays 3D games well (I've often laughed at that prospect).

Just mentioning it since Unity has always been utterly rubbish with screen updating, to the point I've never really used it much before, but turning off 3D always seemed to help in the past. Especially when it came to Visual Studio (which then became a WPF related fault IIRC). As ironic as it is, I'm finding unity quite useable now. The thing I like about it is the integration with the Mac menu bar at the top for status bar icons and stuff. The screen refreshing and drawing is as crap as ever though, as you've found out.

Bottom line is, Fusion 3 is a beta quality product. End of story. I'm using it, have paid for it, and am pretty happy with it, but it's definitely beta quality. Shame really since I've used Fusion since the first beta came out and windows products long before that

If VMWare wants to keep it's customers happy (who knows, maybe it doesn't? - but it should when there's free alternatives on the market!) it's going to HAVE be less secretive, comment on future fixes (keep new features under wraps as much as you like) and timescales. All the stuff it refuses to talk about but is actually just good customer relations!

[MNSteve]

I rather wish that the title on this thread was different. Maybe "The current version is so badly broken that I can't use it." Getting money back is not important to me, other than perhaps sending a message to VMWare.

I bought Fusion because I had good experiences with the VMWare company in a corporate environment. For many months I was very pleased with the product and extolled its virtues to others who were interested in buying a Mac or in running Microsoft-only software on their Mac. By releasing a new version with seriious problems and by not acknowledging that those problems exist the company has lost a lot of goodwill and enthusiasm in their customer base. That's a lot more important to VMWare than $40.

I got the invitation a few months ago to participate in the beta test. I considered it, but figured that there were plenty of folks out there who would be chomping at the bit to test a new release. As it turns out, looks like all of them were running Vista or V7. It only takes a few minutes, and no specialized software, to realize that V3 has serious screen rendering problems when running XP on a MacBook Pro. It's too bad that no one at VMWare kept track of what hardware/software configurations had been tested.

Based on what I've seen in this thread, they must not have changed the format of the file that contains the VM between V2 and V3 so it's possible to revert to V2 without too much difficulty. Now I just have to decide how to invest my time . . . I can download V2 and revert, I can download Parallels and check out that product, or I can try to live with the new release until the fix comes out. None of these alternatives is very appealing.

[wila]

Apart from slowing down my Mac, a major frustration is that F3 won't let you allocate less than 40Gb to the Virtual Machine. Although I only need about 4Gb, I have to devote almost 20% of my hard disk for less than 1% of my needs - which now makes Fusion an expensive luxury.

Sounds like you enabled automatic snapshots, disable it and remove the snapshots that have been created and you have your lost disk space back.

If that doesn't help, then please just start a new thread and describe your problem in more details in there, trying to help you solve a problem in this long thread isn't making it easier to troubleshoot what your exact issue is.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[wila]

Hi,

I got the invitation a few months ago to participate in the beta test. I considered it, but figured that there were plenty of folks out there who would be chomping at the bit to test a new release. As it turns out, looks like all of them were running Vista or V7. It only takes a few minutes, and no specialized software, to realize that V3 has serious screen rendering problems when running XP on a MacBook Pro. It's too bad that no one at VMWare kept track of what hardware/software configurations had been tested.

It must be something specific to your environment that makes XP slow down. WinXP runs faster down here on Fusion 3.

If you want help on this issue from the forum members then I strongly suggest opening a new thread and describe exactly what the problem is along with the type of hardware that you run.

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[nbe]

I have been watching this thread as well and the only post reporting the issues object is listing is that very post with his listing. This is ridiculous.

I know that for some people things break for whatever reason but making stuff up like object is being a very extremist drama queen (but then again, one could have known this would happen judging by the thread title alone and the nitpicking about some extra pixels around some window). I also see a lot of problems in this thread and in the rest of the forum that come down to problems when upgrading from v2 to v3. However no one explains how they upgraded and what they did to resolve the problems. In a lot of other threads in this forum the solution in 99% of the time is uninstalling the old VMware Tools and installing the new one. How many of you people with problems tried this and what did you try to resolve the problem?

I honestly don't believe in shouting v3 has problems and demanding a refund because that absolutely does not help anybody including yourself. It does not resolve the problems and so it does not improve the software. If you want it to work properly send in the bugs you've found, request help on this forum, etc. but try to resolve the problem. If that is not to your satisfaction than try reverting back to v2 or use Parallels/VirtualBox if you want to go that route. And if you do post problems please also post what you did to resolve it as no one in this thread has done so. That to me is far to easy and doesn't help me as a reader to pinpoint whether the issue is user related, Fusion related or related to something different (not everything likes to be virtualised). To me this thread is completely useless as people only state the problems.

[MNSteve]

In response to wila's request to start a new thread . . . I have this mental image of you sitting there trying desperately not to see that there's a problem. There is no lack of documentation in this thread and others, including actual screen shots of the rendering problem. There is nothing I can add to the problem description by starting a new thread.

To recap: I am running XP using a MacBook Pro that is three years old (purchased 11/21/2006). When the screen is rendered, parts of it are not repainted, as is illustrated by screen shots elsewhere in the thread. For example, if the screen saver comes on, when I click in the screen to revive what was there, there are parts of the screen that remain black from the screen saver. When a program ends, parts of its screen remain painted, and when a new program starts part of the screen does not get rendered. These "parts" are apparently random, although obviously there must be a pattern since our computers are still deterministic (I hope). The same problem has been reported here by several different people.

There is nothing out of the ordinary in my configuration, either hardware or software. It worked fine with V2, and is not usable with V3.

You REALLY want more details? You have my email address.

[MaLaun]

I've been using vmware products on a daily basis since 2000/2001 at work.. Thats a long time. I never had trouble and have blindly migrated from version to version. Believe me, Fusion 3 isn't working correctly or up tp specs for a lot of us. It's the first time i've experienced that with a vmware product! It's also the firstt time i downgraded a version.

[nbe]

In response to wila's request to start a new thread . . . I have this mental image of you sitting there trying desperately not to see that there's a problem. There is no lack of documentation in this thread and others, including actual screen shots of the rendering problem. There is nothing I can add to the problem description by starting a new thread.

I have this image of people sitting here not seeing that problems can be solved and that threatening a company is not part of that. I understand there are problems which isn't new, previous versions have had problems and the competition also has problems. The key part in having problems is trying to get them resolved. It is my experience that most people who say they have upgraded only mean they have upgraded the actual program. They did not have upgraded things like the VMware Tools or the Guest Additions or whatever the softwarebuilder calls it. Nor do most people provide full details the first time because you make a decision what could be valuable and what could be useless. No big deal because you can ask. Saying you can't add nothing new doesn't mean you can't add nothing new. The piece of information you regard to as useless might be key information for someone else. Saying you can't add anything to the problem is simply rude and tells other you do not want to be helped. Starting a new thread actually makes it more clear to help as a big thread gets crowded and will be poluted with a lot of different problems, discussions and solutions. It's like searching for a needle in a haystack and therefore not helpful to others who may encounter a similar problem.

When the screen is rendered, parts of it are not repainted, as is illustrated by screen shots elsewhere in the thread. For example, if the screen saver comes on, when I click in the screen to revive what was there, there are parts of the screen that remain black from the screen saver. When a program ends, parts of its screen remain painted, and when a new program starts part of the screen does not get rendered. These "parts" are apparently random, although obviously there must be a pattern since our computers are still deterministic (I hope). The same problem has been reported here by several different people.

Yup, I've seen that problem here too. I've actually seen people running Snow Leopard who are reporting a similar issue within OS X with native apps so it might be an OS X problem (there seem to be a lot of graphics fixes for 10.6.2 so I'd wait for that to be released and check again, right now there are simply far too many graphics bugs in Snow Leopard). I've also seen another and related problem when quickly dragging the windows on the screen, you'll get a glimpse of the background of the vm. However, the vm functions normally as does every other piece of the software, there is no breakage of any feature. In other words this is a minor graphical issue which could be caused by Snow Leopard itself. People are really making an unnecessary big fuss about such a minor graphics glitch. If it were to break the actual use of the software and/or the vm than you'd have a right to scream on top of your lungs wanting a refund. Right now it's just being a drama queen (especially since you need to get close to your screen to even notice it!).

Anyway, thanks for the information, I now have a much clearer view of your problem.

BTW, the list the thread starter gave is flawed as it mentions problems that are fixed or not even replied to or simply questions or problems that were present in previous releases (making it not a v3 problem but a more general Fusion problem which still hasn't been resolved, and yes that's even worse imho) apart from genuine problems. Take a good look at those listed problems in this forum and the replies in those threads and you'll see what I mean. That to me in itself proves the mere fact that this thread starter is just a troll and no software developer. That unfortunately is very shameful as it does not help all the other people who do have genuine problems and needing a solution.

Regarding the WinXP slowdowns...Fusion 3 has better memory management for XP but unfortunately you can only take advantage of that new feature with a new vm setup using the easy install function (not a userfriendly way of doing it). Vista and 7 luckily haven't got that problem. There is a thread about this btw:

Another good thing to remind when upgrading to the new Fusion 3 version from 1.x/2.x is this and this:

When upgrading a VM from a previous version, you need to Uninstall the previous VMware Tools before installing the new VMware Tools.

If you forget to uninstall them first, then uninstall the new tools, reboot, and reinstall them.

Message was edited by: nbe

[WebKam09]

I think that there have been some misconceptions. It is possible that I should be posting in another topic, but the problems I am having are of extremely varied and general in nature. First of all, here are the specs of my mac:

Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier: iMac9,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 6 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Boot ROM Version: IM91.008D.B08

SMC Version (system): 1.36f3

The Windows side is windows Vista Business edition, joined to our local domain off of a Windows 2008 Standard server. All updates are current on Mac, Server and Guest.

The problems that I have observed are as follows:

# Artifacts on windows screens and sections which will not redraw until a mouse is pulled over them (unity mode).

# In windowed mode, screen went blank at various times and for various durations. This was so bad that at one point, the guest operating system told me that there was a problem with the OpenGL drivers and that I should suspend and restart the guest system to attempt to resolve this.

# Other times, the screen would just flicker and be unstable.

# Finally, when in Unity, the screen boundaries and the boundaries of the task bar(s) were not being observed by any open window - mac or fusion.

Now, as a final note - I do not want my money back, per se. I just want the bugs fixed in 3.0 and a bug release done. I did even go so far as to pay for a support call (in reply to which I got an email telling me to uninstall and reinstall the tools). Now, not being an idiot, and having considerable experience with computers and the debugging thereof, I had already removed the tools and reinstalled. Once using the supplied uninstall and once looking on the net and following vmware's instructions on how to do the uninstall and reinstall of the tools manually.

In addition to this computer, I have a macbook pro of similar vintage, running the same guest operating system (windows Vista Business) and am getting the same problems on. The likelihood of two complete different macs, having identical problems, seems to point toward the Fusion 3 as having a few problems. So far, the solutions from vmware have been to uninstall/reinstall tools - done that multiple times, and to upgrade to windows 7 - won't do that, because I try not to jump on any windows upgrade bandwagon. As a final option - I downgraded to vmware 2.x. This worked with no problem, and was not hard to do - and everything is working just fine again.

I will be happy to talk and work with any vmware tech that wishes to call me - please do not hesitate - you have my phone number on your database under my username. I am willing to spend all the time necessary to fix the problems. So, if you at vmware wants to work through this problem, please feel free to call or email.

Fred.

[claver]

So sad! I bought it, excited for using it with new Windows 7 purchase. I use it for work and home. Seemed ok for work use, no better than 2.0.5 but no worse. But for home use it crapped out. Any mouse cursor that is changed by a program (as in many games) becomes invisible. Tested on Civ 4 and Dragon Age. After a couple of hours of forum reading and settings tweaking I sighed and reverted to 2.0.5. I love the product and I guess won't bother getting my money back, I'll just hope for a proper patch SOON.

Pretty poor form to advertize it as being able to hadnle great 3D graphics if you can't see the bloody cursor.

Conor

[nbe]

Have you tried setting the mouse option to never optimize for games? You can do this in the Fusion preferences. That resolved some weird mouse issues for me too (in 2.0.x) and a lot of others as well.

[admin]

Picture 1 makes me think Tools isn't working quite right (have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling?), shaped windows should work in XP. Pictures 2 and 3 make me think you have something like Windowshade X installed, since a minimized window doesn't normally look like that.

[rianquinn]

ROFL

I switched to Parallels 5. VMWare Fusion 3 was just the excuse I needed to try something new. It has to be the worst product I have used on a Mac in a while. This thread at the time of writing has 1200 replies, and the product has only been out for a week :). I mean come on.... did they even bother to test this thing.

Parallels is not without its problems, but VMWare Fusion 3 is so much worse.

[ewestby]

This thread at the time of writing has 1200 replies, and the product has only been out for a week :). I mean come on.... did they even bother to test this thing.

Uh, this thread has 34 replies, not 1,200.

The entire Fusion forum contains over 1,200 separate threads, going back over three years. Just setting the record straight!

[rianquinn]

hahahahah.....opppssss.

Well it should have 1200 threads. Its that bad. I have been using Parallels 5 now for a few hours and I must say, already, its lightyears faster than Fusion 3. This really sucks because I have been using Fusion for a while now and I liked it.

[asatoran]

This thread at the time of writing has 1200 replies, and the product has only been out for a week :). I mean come on.... did they even bother to test this thing.

Uh, this thread has 34 replies, not 1,200.

The entire Fusion forum contains over 1,200 separate threads, going back over three years. Just setting the record straight!

I think he saw 1200 views, which just means that a lot of people are reading the thread. It's now at 1368 views, but that could just be voyeuristic people like me with nothing better to do.

FWIW, I used the beta when I was invited, and I did not have any issues. However, I do not use Unity much, so I did not experience any of the OP's issues with Unity. But otherwise, no issues with installing and running existing VMs, no issues with creating new XP, VIsta & Win7 VMs. Win7 RC & RTM. And all while upgrading from OSX 10.5 to 10.6 and on two different hosts. All things that other people have posted they had issues with. Obviously there must be differences between various user's systems to have such issues, but for my part, I did not have any issues with Fusion during the beta, and even now with the release. Maybe my system is just "cleaner" or something.

[claver]

Yep that's the first thing I tried, since that helped a lot in Fusion 2, but it didn't help at all in Fusion 3. In fact I see no difference between Always Optimize Mouse for Gaming and Never Optimize mouse for Gaming they both give the same terrible flickering or invisible cursor. The only difference I get is the tracking speeds. When I revert to Fusion 2 I have no problems at all on the same game, same virtual machine. It's a Fusion Tools 3 problem and until it gets fixed its gonna turn a LOT of people off this product.

[drwilke]

Sure glad I decided to wait to upgrade!! I guess I'll just stay happy with my V2 for quite some time. :smileycool: