Really slow keyboard response rate

[ryankennedy]

I've been using Fusion since pre-1.0 days and everything has always been great. Since I've upgraded to 2.0 my BootCamp VM has a really slow keyboard response rate. It's making it almost impossible to use. Nothing else on the VM seems to be having any other performance issues. It redraws the screen and loads programs nice and fast.

I've tried turning keyboard shortcuts on and off. Any other ideas?

[admin]

What view mode are you using? Can you try the others?

Can you quantify the slowness?

Have you updated Tools?

[ryankennedy]

What view mode are you using? Can you try the others?

It's happening in both the Full Screen and Windowed view. I don't use unity.

Can you quantify the slowness?

If I type in a sentence like this one, I have to stop and wait for it to very slowly appear onto the screen. I just tried pasting the sentence proceeding this one into notepad in the vm and then holding down the delete key to erase it, and it was erasing it at about 2 letters a second. When I let go of the delete key the cursor stops immediately, it's not buffering it and continuing.

Have you updated Tools?

I did update tools after I upgraded to Fusion 2.0. I just now finished uninstalling the tools, booting directly into windows, installing XP SP3 (which I've been wanting to do anyway) and then reinstalling the vmware tools once it was back up in Fusion. There isn't any improvement.

I tried adjusting the keyboard delay rates in both OS X and Windows, but it doesn't fix it.

Specs: MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Santa Rosa, 4 GB RAM, OS X 10.5.5.

[thelliez]

I had the same problem and it seems to have 'magically' solved by itself.

I migrated from 1.1.3 to 2.0. The new version of VMTools did not seem to work after an un-install and reinstall. I still had to do the control+command to get out of the VM screen. The keyboard was slow to respond. The characters came in bursts. The menus were sluggish. I tried several times uninstalling and reinstalling VMTools without success.

But after few days using the VM without touching VMTools, it fixed by itself! Was a process blocked somewhere and finally completed? Was the VMTools or Fusion installer waiting for several reboots? I do not know...

It would be nice to undertand more about the VMTools installation process.

Thierry

[Otus]

I had this issue on as well (xp pro sp3 on a macbookpro santa rosa, 4gb ram). I have it resolved now, and some of these details are a bit fuzzy (it's been a week or so), so I'm not positive what finally did the trick, but here's what I went through:

1. I have a couple VMs, as well as backup copies. I noticed after doing the upgrade, I had a ton of Found New Hardware, especially USB-related items popping up. If I recall correctly, that was before actually doing the upgrade of Tools. I did the uninstall of vmware tools, multiple reboots, re-installed & didn't help.

2. I tried it with another copy of the VM (a backup copy made the week before) and went through the process, and it was okay.

3. I did a windows System Restore to a checkpoint before the upgrade, and that actually did the trick (I then still had to re-install Tools, but that went okay). So my best guess is that some of the USB drivers got over-installed somehow automatically by windows, so the usb keyboard calls were getting handled by multiple drivers (since the macbookpro internal keyboard is on usb). I also had an external usb aluminum keyboard in us, so that maybe added to the issue.

Good luck!

[ryankennedy]

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to try the system restore trick and see if it gets me anywhere.

[ryankennedy]

Well... my Macbook Pro's logic board died the day after that last post. It took Apple almost two weeks to fix it and get it back to me, and during that time I was sure wishing that I had a stand alone VM instead of using bootcamp (accessed through Fusion) for my main development platform. Having a regular VM would have allowed me to run my development platform on another computer with the VMWare Player while my Mac was down.

Needless to say, as soon as I got the computer back I converted my Boot Camp partition into a VM. This VM doesn't have any keyboard response rate problems. Thanks for the help everybody.

[ryankennedy]

I spoke too soon. My slow keyboard problem is still there.

I've also been watching this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/168943

because I'm getting 100% CPU from the vmwareuser process when I come back from a suspend.

What I've noticed is that during the first few minutes, when the vmwareuser process is running hot, my keyboard works great! No slowdown at all. As soon as the vmwareuser process returns to it's normal functioning the keyboard input slows to molasses.

I've installed and uninstalled tools multiple times. I tried the system restore too. Any other ideas?

[gbelicka]

I'm having this exact same problem. My VM history is a bit complicated, and this happened over the course of some time, so I might not have all the details 100% correct anymore... This was originally a physicall box I migrated using the P2V software a few years ago. I then ran the system under Workstation for a while, and when I got my 8 core PowerMac I started running the image in Fusion. I just upgraded from 1.1.3 to 2.0 and now I have the seriously-sticky-keyboard rate problem. Overall, 2.0 has the features I want, but 'feels' clunky, which is ridiculous given I am running an 3Ghz 8 core mac with 4GB of memory and a terrabyte of drive space and OSX 10.4.5...

I can deal with a little lag now and then, but I'm a programmer. I type for a living. Watching the keystrokes appear 5 seconds late or in 'bunches' is frustrating as hell, esp. with a deadline looming. Of course, the vm in question is my development boxen... If anyone has any ideas I'm open to suggestions. Interestingly, I've got 6 or 7 other vm's that don't appear to be exhibiting the same issues...

The vm in question is XP, SP2 with VS6 and VS2005, Borland C++ builder, and a bunch of other stuff...

As a troublshooting clue, the keyboard slowness feels just like someone turned down the typematic rate in the bios, but I don't think that's it.

Any Ideas are wayyy appreciated.

[gbelicka]

Just another interesting point... After upgrading, I can no longer Ctrl-Multiselect in ANY vm's (not sure why), and my Ctrl-Alt-Ins combination doesn't work anymore to simulate a Ctrl-Alt-Delete. grrr...