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chaossysten
Contributor
Contributor

Mouse flicker in guests

Hello,

Recently all my guest VMs have started to have a weird mouse flicker. This happens even when in the install page for Ubuntu or PopOS, and continues to happen on a fresh install after installing open-vm-tools-desktop.

It didn't use to happen (about a month ago). Curious if anyone has any suggestions on what might be wrong here. I have tried "optimize" for games but while that setting seems to solve the flicker, the input gets really sluggish and unusable. It seems to be a VMware problem though since it happens on any guest (at least Debian based guests that I've tried)

PS: I tried to screen record this but oddly enough the behaviour doesn't appear in the screen recording. What this actually looks like is whenever you are moving the mouse the mouse disappears, when you stop moving or slow down it appears again. So as you move your mouse around you observe flickering as the mouse appears and disappears.

Thanks!

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andylamp
Contributor
Contributor

Hello @chaossysten would this be the same flicker / stuttering I have recorded in this thread as well? Check out the video that I have in my reply. I used my phone to record this.

chaossysten
Contributor
Contributor

YES! And it happens in the guest too, I didn't even realize mine was doing it on the main UI. Good to know it's not just me. However I see you don't seem to have got any solutions either haha

@andylamp 

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andylamp
Contributor
Contributor

Yes of course - it's present on the guests as well; it makes the vm's unusable and I have to restart my PC for it to be fixed for a while. Not really sure what's up; tagging again @hahakiki2010 in hopes of this getting noticed by VMware...

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ronaldhix
Contributor
Contributor

I am also having this issue and it just started happening within a few days. I thought it might have been something else on my computer (graphics driver, windows 10 configuration, new monitors), but it happens regardless of all these being changed to different configurations. It happens in my two Kali (Debian) VMs, but doesn't happen in my Windows 10 VM. It also happens on the tabs to switch to different VMs but doesn't happen above the tabs in the File, Edit,... area. You can't see it as well in the screen record, but I recorded it on my phone and you can clearly see the flickering. open-vm-tools is uptodate and I'm not really sure what else I could mess around with to get this to work. I repaired VMWare and reinstalled it. I cloned the VM to upgrade the hardware capabilities but it still has the same issue. Any help would be great, because this issue is very annoying. Note: It only allows me to upload one file, so I'm going to upload the one recorded with my phone.

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llarsen
Contributor
Contributor

I have had the same issue, which just recently started. I am using Workstation Pro 16 and have the issue with an Ubuntu 20.04 and PopOS 20.04 guest... I tried it from both my Windows 10 20H2 host and my PopOS 20.04 host and had the same issue with both of the VM's. So it doesnt seem to be a Windows or Linux host issue, but an issue with VMWare itself...

I also just created a new PopOS 20.04 vm on my Windows 10 host and it had the same issue also... tried tweaking a few settings, but cannot get it to go away... It constantly flickers when moving the mouse inside the VM.

 

 

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snowbox
Contributor
Contributor

I encountered the same problem with Linux guests in VMware Workstation Pro 15.5 on Windows 10 20H2. I downgraded the Intel Graphics driver to 27.20.100.8783 and the problem went away. Another workaround is to set HWcursor to off in xorg.conf.

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wubwub1
Contributor
Contributor

Having same problem recently with ubuntu 20.04 guest on windows host, vmware workstation 16

wubwub1
Contributor
Contributor

I downgraded to workstation 15 and everything's fine again...

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wubwub1
Contributor
Contributor

Nevermind, I found out why mine was flickering.

I was trying to get my side mouse buttons to work in guest, so I added the following lines to the .vmx file

usb.generic.allowHID = "TRUE"
mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
mouse.vusb.useBasicMouse = "FALSE"

This seems to cause flickering in both workstation 15 and 16 

flaprano
Contributor
Contributor

I'm Having the same problem on my VMs.
I have the VMWare Workstation Pro 16.1.0 build-17198959 installed on a Windows 10 Pro host (20H2 - build 19042.685 - Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.551.0) and have the same problem.

It begined happening on a Ubuntu 20.04 guest and after I tried to create a new guest (with Ubuntu 20.10) the problem continues to happen.
I tried several Linux distros and the problm occurs on every one (Manjaro KDE, Manjaro Gnome, Fedora Gnome and PopOS). On Kubuntu and Fedora KDE spin, the problem is even worse as the window elements keeps flickering.

The problem started more or less a month ago.
On the beginning I started thinking the problem was on my PC (I have a Nvidia RTX 2070 GPU) and tried to reinstall the Windows and all the programs but none of that solved the issue. The past week I tried to use the same Ubuntu 20.10 guest and VMWare 16 on a Lenovo T480 and the same problem happened there.

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hahakiki2010
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

 

Thanks for reporting this issue. Could u add below entry in vmx file and see if the issue is gone?

mks.dx11.disableFlips=TRUE

Thanks,

Yan

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ttom492
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

I also have that issue but on workstation player 15. I think that problem started after update workstation to latest version. Only help is to restart my PC, but it helps only for a while.

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ttom492
Contributor
Contributor

@hahakiki2010 

I added this line to the vmx file but it didn't help.

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snowbox
Contributor
Contributor

After adding mks.dx11.disableFlips to the vmx file, the flickering mouse cursor problem still occurs with the latest Intel Graphics driver 27.20.100.9126. The mouse cursor flickers/disappears only during mouse movement, other elements on the screen do not flicker. (Intel Iris Plus Graphics, VMware Workstation Pro 15.5.7)

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flaprano
Contributor
Contributor

Tried to add this flag and didn't help.
The problem still persists.

Yesterday I tried to update my Windows 10 Pro host to the insider beta channel and that didn't solve the problem either.
What I tried to do so far was:
- Reinstall Windows, VMWare and all apps
- Downgrade VMWare to and old version (VMWare Workstation Pro 14 and 15)
- Downgrade my GPU (RTX 2070) driver (it seems to have a good effect but the problem stills occurs)
- Tried to upgrade Windows to Beta Channel of insider program
- Tried to disable 3D graphics acceleration on VM Settings but that does the VM becomes slow

Inside Ubuntu the performance seems to be better after the windows insider upgrade (but I had to to remove the oficial .deb version of VSCode and install the snap version).
When trying to install Fedora KDE, the problem stills happens (I attached a video).
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agustin227
Contributor
Contributor

Im having the same issue. it's really annoying 

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flaprano
Contributor
Contributor

Not only annoying. It makes VMWare unusable.
I had to migrate all my VMs to VirtualBox. It's really sad but was the best alternative. Had been using vmware for more than 5 years, really love the software but this problem really makes me thinking on try other vm solutions.

pavva
Contributor
Contributor

Same issue: VMWare v16, host: win10, guest: ubuntu 20.04

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pavva
Contributor
Contributor

mks.dx11.disableFlips=TRUE has no effect. Still flickering

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