Mouse flicker in guests

[chaossysten]

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!

[veZuk]

On Windows 20H2 version 19042.1348, the problem is still there. And this, apparently, is the oldest version of Windows 10 Pro for users so that Windows Update does not forcibly update it with the version above. Nvidia driver version 27.21.14.5671. Also tried with Vmware Workstation Pro 15.1. The problem seems to be constant for me now ... Amazing.

[tomastokamrazek]

Have you tried different distro than Linux Mint? I wonder if the issue is related to Guest VM somehow.

[veZuk]

I tried:

Ubuntu 18.04.6
Ubuntu 21.10
Latest OpenSUSE
Fedora 35

Everywhere there is a problem. In Fedora, it looks changeable: it is stable, and after a few seconds it either blinks or freezes, then everything is fine again. I do not observe any bursts of load. The host OS works great.

I also rolled back the BIOS version. Because there have been several security fixes over the years. It didn't help either.

[Kaliac]

I also use it for software development, though most of the work is done through ssh connections.

The only fix I've found is by using the GeForce 466.11 driver. Basically I went down the list of driver versions and eventually found one that doesn't seem to have the issue.

[tomastokamrazek]

I'm currently on newest driver 497.09 and after few hours of work, I noticed, that there is no rage over performance degradation and I don't actually experience the issue anymore. I wanted to post a driver version here, but I noticed, that GeForce Experience was closed. I started it again to see if that could be the culprit.

[ShrodingerKota]

Tried to shut down GeForce Experience too. 3 days running without any notable performance degradation or mouse flickering.

VMware 16.2.1 build-18811642
GeForce Game Ready Driver v496.76
Host Win 10 21H1
Guest Ubuntu 20

P.S.: Maybe GeForce Experience overlay is causing some kind of interference? For me the issue usually appears like accumulating input lag and stutters while using guest UI intensively. And after a few time idle (maybe an hour or two) guest UI responsiveness is back to normal.

[tomastokamrazek]

I disabled in-game overlay long time ago hoping it would solve the issue, so that's not it, although it looks more and more like some sort of a bug in Geforce Experience, which could got resolved in latest version. I am running version 3.24.0.123.

[Kaliac]

I've never had geforce experience installed and I've still had the issue, so I doubt it.

[Mickou06]

I have GeForce experience, but I noticed that this flickering problem occurred on my fresh new VM some times after editing the vmx file, tuning parameters around the mouse to get additional buttons working.

At the end, as suggested earlier in this discussion, I ended up creating a Xorg.conf file to disable the mouse hardware cursor, and now I have all my mouse buttons working, and no more flickering problem nor graphical performance issues, for at least 2 weeks.

So for me, there is something weird and broken around the emulated mouse / hardware cursor handling.

[bored1]

Running VMware Workstation Pro 16.2 on windows 11, Lubuntu 20.04 LTS as guest. Had disappearing cursor problem since first install. Tried changing settings as recommended, reinstalling guest, upgrading VMware, etc, etc, all to no effect. After seeing the references to NVidia drivers, I subsequently updated my Intel Iris Xe graphics drivers to 30.0.100.9836, and the cursor problem has finally gone!

[HFRibeiro]

Thank you, after a million tries that solved it also for me.

[sx0tt]

I found a simple solution that worked. 

windows settings > apps > installed apps > vmware

click the elypses menu and hit modify. that'll pop up a setup wizard. make sure vmware is shutdown before clicking "next"

hit repair and let it do it's thing. you will have to restart once it's done.

This has solved flickering and sluggishness in one go and I didn't have to modify and .conf files. 

[CharlesGilley]

Unfortunately not.

I need to clarify my comment - my issue has always been mouse stutter _not_ flickering pointers.  Sorry for confusing the thread.

[Dingofest_2]

I had the same problem. Uninstalling VMware Pro or downgrading to 16.2.2 did not help. Playing around with VMware INPUT preferences did not help. I did not attempt Xorg changes in any of my VM's

By the way this was only a problem in Linux based guest VM's. Windows guest VM's had no cursor issues.

I'm using an Intel NUC 11 Gen i7 Intel Xe Graphics

I fixed the issue by uninstalling the Intel graphics driver 27.x and installing a Beta driver
Graphics Driver 31.0.101.3413/31.0.101.2111 for 6th-12th Gen Intel® Core™ Processor Graphics
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19344/intel-graphics-windows-dch-drivers.html

[veZuk]

On vmware workstation 17 the cursor blinking issue still remains.

[BoQito]

Hi all, i am new here. I registered to respond on this issue. I'm sorry for kicking this topic but since it has been going on for quite some time and for many users still is, i hope the solution i'm sharing to the possible cause will help you out.

When in the main workspace area, press Ctrl + P, select 'Input' and under 'Cursor' set 'Optimize mouse for games' to 'Always'.
I have found that in changing the input settings for the mouse has solved my issue through 'isolating' the mouse.
Downside of this is that you have to manually 'release' the input to switch workspace.

Hope this fix helps you with the flickering mouse issue.