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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

display corruption in guest - induced by full screen

I run a new iMAC 24 (2GB ram) at 1920x1200 resolution under OS X Tiger 10.4.10

The guest is Windows XP Pro. I have had occasional dots in the display which I thought (and Apple agreed) was a hardware problem. Apple replaced the logic board, but the problem persists. I attach a partial screen shot. The pattern repeats over the whole screen.

It seems I can provoke the dots when I enter full screen mode in the guest. Once they appear, they persist until I reboot XP. I am not completely sure what starts the dots, but once they appear they usually also show in OS X when I minimize guest. Sometimes I have to cold boot the whole machine to remove them.

Could I reinstall Fusion on top of the existing install without losing all my settings?

Other than this problem, Fusion is working fine. Any help appreciated

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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

Wow. I see that the screen capture does not really show the dots. Is this a clue?

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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

I took a camera picture of my screen that shows the dots.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Could I reinstall Fusion on top of the existing

install without losing all my settings?

It might depend on exactly what settings you're referring to, but you could probably do this.

Do you have 3D acceleration in the guest? Does it happen with other guests?

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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

I do not have 3d acceleration turned on in Fusion. I am not running any other guest OS's, and do not plan to.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

The reason I was asking about other guests (especially different OS families) is because it would help track down whether the issue is related only to XP or is more generic. Another useful test would be to run this same VM on a different machine.

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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks but I have enough going on without getting involved in another OS. I will just not run in full screen mode for now.

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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

More clues...When guest (XP) is minimized, and I display a slideshow (from an email) in OS X, the dots appear.

If I quit VMware completely, the dots are gone in OS X when I show the same slideshow.

It seems clear to me that the problem is in VMware Fusion. All I can think to do is to reinstall Fusion or wait for a later build?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Can you try any other fullscreen apps?

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bobfritts
Contributor
Contributor

The transition to full screen is a VM command to take the guest to full screen, not having anything to do with any particular app. Just selecting full screen in guest (VM) triggers the dots. And, when Fusion is running (but minimized) and I run some programs in OS X, the dots appear. So, the fact of Fusion being in RAM, (and in the display memory?) seems to be the source of the problem.

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