VMWare Fusion 4.1 Full Screen - Black Bars?

[Cyberfunk]

Hi all,

I'm getting black bars on the top and bottom of my VM sessions when I try to use fullscreen mode with my VM.  I'm not sure how to fix the issue as I've tried all the obvious things (latest VMWare Fusion, and VMWare Tools in the guest OS).

I've been having trouble with VMWare Fusion Ver. 4.1.0 (529802) and fullscreen mode with a Win 7 x64 VM.  I upgraded to 4.1 and Mac OS X Lion at the same time.  When I upgraded, I also upgraded the VMWare Tools in the guest OS (see screenshots).  I've noted that I CAN change the resolution within Windows manually and expand the Windows screen to fill the black bars, but as soon as I  exit full screen and go back in the black bars return... it's as if VMWare isn't telling the guest OS the proper resolution to set on going into fullscreen !

Does anyone know how to fix this ?  It's incredibly annoying.

Before clicking :fullscreen button:

After clicking fullscreen button :

[tracywang]

That's really strange. My full screen will fill the display. Can you try uninstall the tools and reinstall it, there must be something wrong with tools configuration.

[Cyberfunk]

I've tried reinstalling multiple times, even reinstalling the whole OS before doing a VMware tools reinstall, and it doesn't fix the problem... suggestions.. VMWare, help please?

[Cyberfunk]

Futhermore, I've discovered something even more annoying...

VMWare fullscreens whatever i've got BEFORE I hit the fullscreen button (as if VMWare isn't passing the resize command to the VM).

For example, if I start with this size in my VM:

I get this when I fullscreen (note the pixelated appearance.. this is exactly how it looks on my screen.. low resolution):

but when I resize the VM in non-fullscreen mode.. VMWare/ VMWare tools behaves exactly as expected!  See:

Anybody got any idea what's going on here? VMWare, i'm looking at you.. is this a bug ?

[Cyberfunk]

Still stuck with this problem.. anyone got any suggestions ?  This is pretty aggravating !

[dariusd]

Hi Cyberfunk,

I second tracywang's comment -- That's really strange.

Just to double-check: After you hit the fullscreen button, if you manually set the guest resolution to the full 1440x900 of your host, it uses that full resolution correctly, right?

When you reinstalled the OS, did you do the reinstall over the top of your existing OS in that VM, or into a fresh, blank VM?  (Sub-question: Did Windows know that it was doing a reinstall, or did it see it as a first-time install?)

It might be useful to post the vmware.log showing the problem: Just power on the VM, switch it in and out of full-screen a few times so that you are seeing the black bars while in fullscreen, then shut down the VM, locate the VM in Finder, Ctrl-click on it and choose Show Package Contents, look for vmware.log in there (ignore any other logs), and attach it to a reply in this thread.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[Cyberfunk]

Darius,

When I reinstalled the OS it was into a fresh, new VM, which caused the same issue.  I also tried installing a fresh Ubuntu install, and experienced the same resizing problem, but only on toggling to fullscreen mode.

As you said, when I set the resolution manually inside fullscreen mode, I can fill the screen, but this setting gets destroyed as soon as I exit and try to go back into fullscreen mode.  I'll post the VMware log as soon as I get back to my machine tomorrow.

I also tried something interesting.. I took one of the VMs that had this problem and used it on another Mac I have that has VMWare Fusion, and the problem did NOT ocurr.  (This mac/install seems to operate normally).  This leads me to think it might be a preferences file corruption or a specific bug with my mac that i'm having trouble on...

[Cyberfunk]

Hi Darius,

Here are the logs you requested…[Update, see new post below.. this post is wrong log file] as you can see from the annotated VMWare log file, there is absolutely no entries when I do the window full screening back and forth.. so there's little to help us out there. Notice, however, that on a manual resize (in windowed mode, by dragging the window's size in MacOS X) a log entry IS made.

However, I was also watching the console while this was going on, and noticed the following messages that were repeatably triggered with a full-screen execution… it seems like these errors are directly related to the full-screen problem i'm having.  Any ideas one what to do with these?  This seems like it might be a corner-case bug report ? (no idea what's causing me to observe it though...):

12/15/11 7:47:48.551 AM Console:  Marker - Dec 15, 2011 7:47:48 AM
12/15/11 7:47:56.633 AM Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListGlobalClipShape: Invalid window 0x2e35
12/15/11 7:47:56.633 AM Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListGlobalClipShape: Invalid window 0x2e35
12/15/11 7:47:56.634 AM Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformsAtPlacement: Failed
12/15/11 7:47:56.634 AM Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowTransformAtPlacement: Failed
12/15/11 7:47:56.661 AM vmware-vmx: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetSurfaceBounds
12/15/11 7:47:56.661 AM vmware-vmx: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

[WoodyZ]

That is not the .log file requested.  The one requested is the "vmware.log" file for the target Virtual Machine and is inside the target Virtual Machine Package.

Have a look at: Work with Virtual Machine Packages

Also if you want to, just do the following...

To help figure out what is what the best way to provide comprehensive diagnostic information is to use the "Collect Support Information" command from the VMware Fusion (menu bar) > Help > Collect Support Information and then attach the .tgz file it created on your Desktop to a reply post.

[Cyberfunk]

Whoops, my bad.. I pulled the wrong log file (had to do it from memory, was on the train).  Thanks for the point-out... here's the correct one.

I toggled the fullscreen / normal screen 3 or 4 times and then promptly quit to get the log file.

The time stamps appear to be associated with messages of this type (or something around them):

MKS-SWB: Number of MKSWindows changed: 0......

[dariusd · Accepted solution]

Hi Cyberfunk,

Sorry it took me a while to catch up with this thread... for some reason my forum email notifications have quit working.

Your Fusion user preferences file, in '~/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences', seems to contain the following:

   pref.autoFitFullScreen = fitHostToGuest

With your VM powered off (not sure if suspending will be sufficient) and with Fusion closed, remove the abovementioned line, then launch Fusion, power on your VM, and then see if your guest correctly fits the full-screen view.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[wagawaga]

Hi,

I have the exactly the same problem. Resizing the vm while in single window mode works. But when switching to full screen, the vm keeps the same resolution as it had in single window mode. I also had the pref.autoFitFullScreen in my preferences file, but removing it didn't change anything.

Any more idea's?

[Cyberfunk]

Hi Darius, your preferences fix worked for me... but apparently not for other people.. weird.  Anyways.. my problem is fixed.

[PSi_101]

I'm having this problem and the preferences fix worked for me too.

Thanks Darius!