Logitech Unifying Receiver only partly recognized

[Jerry_D1]

Spoiler

I am running Windows 11 in Workstation 16 Player on Windows 10 host system. My Logitech mouse and keyboard are connected to the host machine through the Logitech unifying receiver. The guest system partly recognizes this and I can use the keyboard and the mouse. However, they are treated as PS/2 hardware and the Unifying Software does not recognize that there is a receiver plugged in.

Because of that, I can not customize the buttons. Also the mouse wheel scrolling does not work. The guest Device Manager reports this: 

While the host Device Manager looks like this:

What can I do to get at least the mouse wheel scrolling to work?

[RaSystemlord]

I don't know how this helps you, but my system tells a bit different story. I'm running with Windows 11 Guest 22000.120 (the latest to date) with Player 16.1.0 build-17198959.

The mouse scrolling does work. Don't know what this unifying means, because I have no such text with my Logitech Wave keyboard, using an USB dongle for giving access to both keyboard and mouse - no wires. I suspect that my gear is from older generation of Logitech than yours.

What I see on the Guest is shown in the pictures. The Host might not be interesting to see, since it is Kubuntu 20.04.2 (the latest LTS for Kubuntu). I have done nothing to make this work - it worked straight away (to my surprise) ... and as usual, no manual driver installs on the Host, as is common with Linux distros.

So, this is a different situation, but this might be because of Windows 11 version or VMware version, after all.

[Jerry_D1]

Thanks a lot for your kind input. We are using the same version of Windows 11 and my version of Vmware is 16.1.2 build-17966106. I guess the key difference here is the host system. Mine is Windows 10, yours is Kubuntu. Apparently Windows 10 and Vmware do not communicate correctly when it comes to Logitech. Kubuntu does.

[RaSystemlord]

@Jerry_D1 

Could be, but I'm no expert in knowing how this communication really works. Maybe somebody else can give you more tips.

[banackm]

The problem with most custom mice inter-operating with VMware Workstation/VMRC is usually that they have custom software running into the session that injects mouse events themselves into the foreground application, rather than sending it through the standard Windows input stack.  This doesn't interact well with how VMware gets mouse/keyboard input.

You can sometimes configure application-specific settings, launch the Logitech software as Administrator, otherwise configure the mouse software to get it to work, but it's really hit and miss.

[Jerry_D1]

I can do without the Logitech customizations, but I definitely do need the wheel scrolling. And I'm not able to do anything from the Logitech software since the receiver is not correctly recognized by the VM. The normal Windows mouse settings do show the wheel tab and it's correctly set, but the wheel has no effect in any application.

[banackm]

Ah sorry, this would be the Logitech Mouse configuration on the host.  We don't actually pass the mouse through to the Guest, we just rely on the Host Operating System sending us the input events, and then we have our own virtual mouse device with our own driver that runs in the Guest.  They sometimes have a setting that works as a compatibility mode, and injects different events, or injects them more normally.  But every mouse software I've looked at works differently.

As an advanced option, if you had a second mouse, you can sometimes pass through one mouse completely into the Guest (so the Host can't use it at all), and then you can use the complete 3rd party mouse driver/software, but that's an unusual configuration.

[Jerry_D1]

I've just found the answer in another forum! If I change the setting for Smooth Scrolling in Logitech options (on the host) the wheel scrolling becomes available in the guest! Thanks a lot for your kind support.