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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

WinXP video nightmare

I took a WinXP VM and ran it under Fusion. Video is a nightmare.

1) When I first start the VM, all left mouse clicks on the desktop are treated as right mouse clicks until I actually do a right mouse click.

2) When I go to full screen mode, the screen is completely black. The problem seems to be a lack of refresh, as I can click-drag around on the desktop to force a refresh of that part of the desktop. Opening a window and moving it around will force a refresh of the newly-revealed areas.

When I go back to the windowed mode, the screen remains as it was with the unrefreshed regions.

3) When I go to full screen mode, the guest OS does not adjust its size. I have a 30" Apple Cinema display, and love to use the massive screen real estate. I know this is controlled by several options in Workstation. It'd be nice to have those controls back, or to have my whims catered to. :smileygrin: :smileygrin: :smileygrin:

4) I see the same banding of otherwise smooth gradients that I see under Linux. I have updated the VMware tools in the guest OS and rebooted.

Host: MacBook Pro, OS X 10.4.8, all updates

Guest: WinXP, some updates --- I have auto-update turned off as historically I've had problems with updates screwing up my development machine.

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17 Replies
rcardona2k
Immortal
Immortal

There's a release note about very large resolutions, althought with different symptoms. Have you tried to run your guest with a smaller, standard resolution like 1600x1200 or 1152x864?

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

Also, I've noticed that if I go to the Display Properties -> Settings, the "Screen resolution" sliding bar is set to 640x480 (all the way to the left), while in reality it looks like 1400x1050 or there abouts.

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

Have you tried to

run your guest with a smaller, standard resolution

like 1600x1200 or 1152x864?

I just changed to various resolutions including as small as Display Properties goes (800x600), but I see the same behaviours.

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bgertzfield
Commander
Commander

Hi blackpuma,

This is very unusual. Would you mind filing a Support Request with your logs and the result of a system_profiler > output.txt run?

http://www.vmware.com/support/

Thanks.

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

Done. FYI here is the number:

Thank you for filing support request 346355.This is very unusual. Would you mind filing a

Support Request with your logs and the result of a

system_profiler > output.txt run?

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

OK... I have more information.

For more details on my setup (which is relevant):

I have a 17" MacBook Pro, 1680x1050 resolution on the laptop's flat panel monitor.

I have a 30" Apple Cinema Display, 2560 x 1600 (behind the MBP, raised up a bit)

System Settings are arranged thus:

http://www.ifm-services.com/tmp/fusion-sysprefs-display-01.jpg

I have the menu bar on the 30" display, as you can see.

Thus far I've been running Fusion on the 30" display. My normal workflow is to have auxillary programs running on the laptop display, and my main focus on the 30" display.

Just for giggles I moved the Fusion window down to the laptop display.

I hit command-return for full screen... voilà... no video display problems except for the gradient problem, and the screen resolution in the client was set for 1680x1050. I hit command-return again, and voila... no display problems except for the gradient problem. Client resolution is back to 1400x956.

I moved the window back up to the 30" display, hit command-return... same problems as I described at the beginning.

So, it seems that the video problems are related to running on the 30" display.

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

BTW, kudos on being able to seamlessly move the mouse cursor from one display to the other while in full-screen mode. I always wanted to be able to do that when running Workstation 5.5 on BootCamp.

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HPReg
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

The feature is now available in Workstation 6 beta as well.

I guess all this means is that we need to order a bunch of 30'' Cinema displays for all engineers in the Fusion team. For testing purpose, of course Smiley Happy

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TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

1) Is this a reproducable situation? I have occasionally seen this problem in windows where the left mouse button acts as the right mouse until you right-click, but it wasn't VM specific, in fact, I have never seen it happen in a VM.

2) If you lower your resolution on the 30" display to 2560x1600 does it work correctly?

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

1) Is this a reproducable situation?

OK, I'm not seeing the mouse problem anymore. It was 100% reproducable, but has stopped for some reason. I can't figure out how to make it come back. The video problem persists, however.

2) If you lower your resolution on the 30" display to

2560x1600 does it work correctly?

???

2560x1600 is the native resolution. The System Preferences > Displays won't allow a higher resolution to be selected.

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TheLoneVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

1) Interesting. Was there anything you were doing on the host before starting the VM maybe?

2) Sorry I meant the next resolution smaller, 2048x1536 (4:3) or 2048x1280 for the widescreen mode...

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

OK, just to experiment:

1) I have a CentOS VM running (correctly) in full-screen on the laptop display.

2) I dropped the resolution on the 30" display down to a "standard" PC resolution: 1920x1440.

3) I fired up the WinXP VM on the 30" display.

4) I hit command-return in the WinXP VM to go to full-screen resolution...

IT WORKED... sort of.

The good news: The WinXP VM correctly went to full screen. Woo hoo!

The bad news: When I switch the 30" display to 1920x144, the full-screen CentOS VM moved down a few dozen pixels!?!?!?!?! exposing the desktop below it. If I change the 30" display back to 2560x1600, then the VM pops back up to the top of the screen where it should be.

What appears to be going on is this:

1) The display layout is thus: http://www.ifm-services.com/tmp/fusion-sysprefs-display-01.jpg

2) When I go full-screen on the laptop, it appears to set the top of the VM to 2560 pixels regardless of what the current resolution on the 30" display is.

At this point I'm pretty sure that I'm not doing something wrong, and that Fusion's ful-screen capability is pooched with this combination of displays.

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

After I switched back to 2560x1600, the VM on the lower display moved up onto the upper display by approximately the same amount. !?!?!?!

I think Fusion still believes that the upper resolution is 1920x1440.

Here's a screen shot of the lower (laptop) screen when I moved from 2560x1600 downto 1920x1440. Note how the full-screen VM shifted downward.

http://www.ifm-services.com/tmp/1920x1440-offset-fullscreen-vm.png

I then took the VM out of full-screen mode.

Here's a screenshot of the upper (30") display when I changed it back to 2560x1600, and put the VM on the lower (laptop) display back to full-screen. You can see how the VM is overlapping up onto the upper (30") display.

http://www.ifm-services.com/tmp/2560x1600-offset-fullscreen-vm.png

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Yep, switching resolutions on the host while in fullscreen mode is buggy (so is removing displays). This is a known issue and a bug has been filed.

(Clarification: switching host resolution is a known issue, not sure about the original post)

Message was edited by:

etung

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

OK... good to know.

The only "real" problem that I can reproduce consistently, then, appears to be that full-screen doesn't resize or refresh correctly when using a "non-standard" resolution like 2560x1600.

Message was edited by:

blackpuma

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blackpuma
Contributor
Contributor

As a follow-up testing on Beta 3:

1) When I first start the VM, all left mouse clicks on the desktop are treated as right mouse clicks

until I actually do a right mouse click.

This behaviour appers to be gone.

2) When I go to full screen mode, the screen is completely black. The problem seems to be a

lack of refresh, as I can click-drag around on the desktop to force a refresh of that part of the

desktop. Opening a window and moving it around will force a refresh of the newly-revealed areas.

3) When I go to full screen mode, the guest OS does not adjust its size.

These two problems still exist except for the following situation. If I

a) update the guest tools and drivers under WinXP, and

b) add the following to the VM's .vmx file:

svga.maxHeight=1600

svga.maxWidth=2560

svga.vramSize="167772160"

then switching to full screen (2560x1600) works fine! (Woo hoo!) Specifically, the screen changes resolution and refreshes correctly.

I have not tried this under Linux yet, but older versions of Windows do not appear to work. (I don't know whether this is really a problem.)

4) I see the same banding of otherwise smooth gradients that I see under Linux.

I have updated the VMware tools in the guest OS and rebooted.

\*ahem* This turned out to be "problem between chair and keyboard." \*blush*

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Andreas_Masur
Expert
Expert

\*ahem* This turned out to be "problem between chair

and keyboard." \*blush*

\*lol*...I know that feeling...

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