[SOLVED] Workstation 8.x Console Display Issue

[theooze]

I have VMware Workstation 8.02 installed on a Fedora 14 box.  This also happened w/ 7.x as well on the same box.  My guest is win7 x86.  vmware tools always match the version of workstation running. happens w/ 3d graphics enabled or disabled.  i will fire up a GUI program on the VM, like sqldeveloper, or a java based application and the gui in the 'console' or vmware workstation window will freeze.  i can move the mouse around and click but i don't see anything happening.

so i enable the VNC console and fire up vnc from my host.  from VNC everything works normally.  i can see the apps i'm running, etc.  i can launch new apps and use the guest as normal.  what is weird is that if i mouse over to the workstation window (away from my VNC) i can actually see the mouse interacting w/ the guest OS and doing things even though the guest os through the workstation window shows no change in the open windows and such.

i will close down an app or maximize and minimize a few windows and the display in the workstation window will start working again.

has anyone seen this before ?  i'm not sure what level this could be at or what to even start looking at.

[rajeshkongu · Accepted solution]

can u update the video driver and chipset driver may be it also makes the problem

[theooze]

The chipset or video driver of what? the guest (which already has the latest vmware tools) or the host?

[theooze]

Here's where it gets weirder.  I've got four monitors on two dual head DVI nVidia cards.  I'm using the nVidia 280.13 driver (kmod-nvidia-2.6.35.14-97.fc14.x86_64-280.13-2.fc14.2.x86_64).  Each pair is a twin-view and i use Xinerama to make it one display.

The VM is running on the bottom display, and I get the 'stuck' behaviour.  Then I drag the VMware Workstation window up to the top pair of displays and there's no more 'freeze' and I can use the VM as normal.  If i drag the window back to the bottom pair of displays, the display in the console goes back to the 'frozen' state, showing the first 'frozen' screen.

This only seems to happen when I have a particular java app running.  It's a RCP (same engine as eclipse) based GUI.  When I shutdown the app. the VMware console/VM works normally no matter what screen it's on.

So how could an application running in the VM affect the display in this way ?  I'm not sure what the real issue here is - the java app causing this display 'freeze' or something w/ the video drivers and the multi-monitor setup.

[theooze]

I finally got around to upgrading to Fedora 18 and the new (binary) nvidia driver, and that seems to have resolved the issue.though there is a problem w/ the nvidia driver packaging and i had to follow this fix:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=56833