USB Mouse and Keyboard Problems in VMWare Workstation / Ubuntu 8.10

[seani]

I'm running VMWare Workstation for Linux build 6.5.0 build-118166

My host is Ubuntu 8.10 / 2.6.27-7-generic, and I'm hosting another instance of the same OS on the same machine.

The problem I'm seeing is that the keyboard and mouse behave incorrectly / erratically in the host machine. It's a Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard 1.1

Essentially there are two problems:

1) The dedicated cursor keys / pageup / down / home / delete don't work correctly. As an example, PageUp wants to take a screenshot.

2) The mouse seems slow to recognise clicks / drags. As an example, if I click on a tab in Firefox and move immediately, the tab begins to drag. Same if I click on an image and then move the mouse - a drag is initiated.

I've tried several combinations of keyboard layout in the guest Ubuntu instance to no avail. No problems of this nature in the host, or in an a guest instance of XP.

Any suggestions?

[Scissor]

Not much of a suggestion, but I see that Workstation 6.5.1 was released today. Perhaps that version might work better for you? I think I read somewhere else that 6.5.1 has better linux USB support...

[seani]

Thanks, I'll have a scan through the release notes and consider upgrading.

Of course if would help if my original post hadn't been inaccurate nonsense:

The host machine is absolutely fine.

The guest machine displays erratic (and increasingly frustrating) behaviour.

[CharlieM · Accepted solution]

Does the workaround KB 1007439 make any difference?

[seani]

Thanks Charlie, this works perfectly. I've added a bit of feedback to the fix to ask them to include a few terms to make it easier to find, and I'll stick a few links on the forums where other Ubuntu users had similar frustration.

Cheers

Sean