Unity on 8.5.10 for Windows XP has massive problems

[dada78641]

Hi all. Was wondering if anyone else has the same problem. I've got a Windows XP VM which somehow goes completely nuts when I turn on Unity mode.

When I activate it, I don't see any windows or programs at all, but the VM itself starts very rapidly going into and out of focus. It seems that numerous programs are being started inside the VM, for some reason. Here's an example where numerous Explorer windows were opened on My Documents, it stopped after a while in this case. In my OSX Dock I can literally see the programs flying by. Also in the VM List's preview window you can see the programs being opened.

In some cases it stops after a while, in some cases I have to kill the program (which is hard because for some reason the VM keeps going in and out of focus, and any other program you select also goes in and out of focus, so it's hard to type in e.g. a terminal).

Has anyone else has this? I've reinstalled VMware Tools but it doesn't work. The VM is set to hardware version 12, the latest for my version. I don't know when Unity broke because I normally use Windows XP in fullscreen mode.

Thanks for any help

[zhus]

Could you try to uninstall VMtools first, then clean install it?

PS: In the screenshots, I see the VM name is VesuviusXP which is not consistent with the published guest app (MicroXP). I guess you can try to clean up the "Applications" folder in your VM bundle. Don't forget backup the VM bundle first.

[dada78641]

Thank you for your response!

Uninstalling and reinstalling has no effect, unfortunately. I just tried it a second time to be sure. It did hide my taskbar and change my desktop background color to gray, which I guess is preparation for Unity.

Also, I recently renamed the VM, but it is the same one. MicroXP is the old name, but I copied it to my new computer and wanted a new, unique name for the copy. Sorry for not being clear about that. But it is the same one.

edit: I wanted to add the following. I just reinstalled Windows XP from scratch, installed only the VMware Tools, and enabled Unity. The same thing happens. Just now it opened 53 new windows before I could stop it.

edit 2: just tried it on my laptop, which also runs OSX 10.13.6. Same thing happens. I believe this bug is reproducible with the right OSX and VMware Fusion version (8.5.10 (7527438)).

[dada78641]

Hi there, I was wondering if you have any other suggestions? I still haven't fixed this problem, but as per my last edits I think it's reproducible (at least on two machines for me).

I would greatly appreciate any pointers you can offer.

[dada78641]

Sorry for bumping this again, but I'm still hoping that someone has an idea of what's wrong. To recap, reinstalling VMtools doesn't work, clean installing Windows XP doesn't work, and I was able to reproduce the issue on two different machines.