Upgrade from VMWare 4 to 6 messed up my Ubuntu VM

[geophile]

I've been using VMWare 4 with an Ubuntu 12.04 VM with no problems. When I installed the Ubuntu VM, I disabled Unity. This has not been a happy experience:

1) command+ctrl+enter no longer toggles full screen mode. I see that this was changed to command+ctrl+F.

2) VMWare crashed the second time I opened my VM. Seems ok now.

3) My Ubuntu desktop is now messed up. There is an extra panel on the top, and another one on the side, with application shortcuts. (This occurred both before and after I reinstalled VMWare Tools.) How/why did VMWare do this? How do I disable it?

My main question is #3, how do I restore my old Ubuntu desktop, without the extra panels?

This is by far the worst VMWare Fusion upgrade I have encountered.

Jack Orenstein

[WoodyZ]

A screenshot might be helpful to understand the situation.

[koi]

When I installed the Ubuntu VM, I disabled Unity.

You're talking about Ubuntu's Unity (the windowing system), not Fusion's Unity (seamless desktop), right?

3) My Ubuntu desktop is now messed up. There is an extra panel on the top, and another one on the side, with application shortcuts. (This occurred both before and after I reinstalled VMWare Tools.) How/why did VMWare do this? How do I disable it?

I doubt this is something Fusion intentionally did (I don't think they muck around with guest windowmanager settings), it sounds like Ubuntu's windowmanager got messed up somehow, and I suspect treating it as not-Fusion-related will get better results. As WoodyZ said, a screenshot would be helpful to understand what your situation is.

Other possibly relevant information would be whether you've updated VMware Tools in the guest and if 3D acceleration is enabled.

[geophile]

I disabled Ubuntu's Unity in the past by disabling 3D acceleration. Crude, but it worked. And I forgot that I did that. Apparently, VMWare 6 enables 3D acceleration by default. I turned it off, and got my old desktop back.

My real beef is with Ubuntu 12.04, but VMWare 6, by unilaterally deciding to re-renable 3D acceleration, made me trip over a problem that I solved a while ago.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Jack