Workstation 17.5.0: (enhanced?) keyboard driver problem

[Korbinian]

Hi,

this is for anyone having the same trouble after upgrading to 17.5.0; I did the standard in place upgrade, and - as allways- installed the enhanced keyboard driver.

After that I started up my vm and did some work in IDEA. Shortly after I edited some code at once a whole line got erased instead of just 1 click on the remove key. You could literally see the line beeing draged leftwards and dissapear letter by letter.... At first I was ok... well.. wtf... after 2 mins the same again. I rebooted my laptop and restarted my work. Suddenly after 4 mins the whole system removes line by line and this time it even didnt let me use my own keyboard anymore... didnt stop... and tried to delete further even after the code file was already empy (thanks git... no worries here ). Also the whole system hung without beeing able to press any key - only way out was a complete hard reset of the hardware.

I tried to fix this for some time but only after I did a complete uninstall and reinstall with reboots and lefting out the "enhanced keyboard driver" the problem seems gone.

So, if you have any problems with your computer typing or deleting on its own: get rid of the "enhanced keyboard driver"!

For Vmware in case you're interested:

Betriebsystemname Microsoft Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045
Systemhersteller Dell Inc.
Systemmodell Precision 7760
Prozessor Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3187 MHz, 6 Kern(e), 12 logische(r) Prozessor(en)
BIOS-Version/-Datum Dell Inc. 1.23.0, 07.06.2023
Installierter physischer Speicher (RAM) 64,0 GB

[jssev]

There are people in the thread using Linux as the host and still experiencing this issue (including me, Linux in both guest and host). Whatever's causing it, I don't see how it could be anything specific to Windows or the Windows version of the software.

[BenniG82]

I'm also experiencing this issue.

I tried not using the "enhanced" keyboard driver, but the problem still occurs.

I have a Win10 host and an Ubuntu 22.04 guest.

The only "special" configuration in my setup was disabling "Automatically grab and ungrab the mouse" in Global Preferences -> Input because it caused strange behavior in my multi-monitor setup. But this worked flawless in pervious versions.

[ssill2]

So I'm still going for a few days without this issue.

going into the vm settings and changing the setting to not try to use the enhanced keyboard driver, if available, so far has fixed the issue for me.  I've done this on all my vms and not just the one where the issue happened nearly every day.

I didn't want to go through the trouble of reverting versions.

[gantonjo-tnm]

Thank you for your link to the old installer files. I am however not able to figure out how to downgrade the VM from 17.5.0 to 17.0.2. I am running VMWare Workstation on a Windows 11 Pro PC.

[gantonjo-tnm]

Ahhh... finally found how to downgrade the VM myself under VM->Manage->Change Hardware Compatibility...

Downgraded to 17.x and my AlmaLinux 9 VM started successfully again. 

[giaacomo2004]

same here, after a while (can be half an hour or a day..) the input devices -only- on the vm are completely irresponsive. ssh keeps running, though I couldn't find any solution other than reboot. not the best way as that vm is my working pc when working from home.

here's some info about my config

host:

System:
Kernel: 5.15.0-88-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.4.0 Console: pty pts/21
Distro: Linux Mint 21.2 Victoria base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Dell product: Precision 3630 Tower v: N/A serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 0NNNCT v: A01 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell v: 2.10.0
date: 07/12/2021

vmware: 

version17.5.0 build-22583795

vm:
Kernel: 5.15.0-88-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.4.0
Desktop: Cinnamon 5.8.4 Distro: Linux Mint 21.2 Victoria
base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy

[0x48756773]

YES! THIS!

I was trying to write an exam the other day that required me to use Linux in my VM. This happened to me about 6-7 times resulting in me having to reboot the VM and have to set up the exam over and over again.

Everything continues to run in the background on the VM. I can see the Network activity and CPU activity continue, but the mouse and keyboard stop working. Trying to switch to another TTY doesn't work, and I can't send ctrl + alt + delete either.

[Guido3]

I worked around my issues by reverting VM ware workstation back to 17.0.0. Since I already spent so much time trying to analyse this problem I figured I might as well add a little guide on how to roll back your version.

During my 17.5.0 installation I let it upgrade my encryption to the latest standards, so when I tried to downgrade, I had to remove the encryption first. You can do that by editing your virtual machine settings:



And then press Remove Encryption. This exampled shows a grayed out button, because this is a screenshot from a Windows machine, but it was enabled for my Fedora VM:

Then revert the VM compatibility to VM Workstation 17.x


Change it here:

And now just use the "Add and remove programs" from windows to start the VM Workstation uninstaller. After that you may want to reboot and install 17.0.0. Hopefully the VM ware team will come with a patch to fix the issues.

[smileyofoz]

I have the same issue.  I'm a Windows 11 Pro host with an Ubuntu 23.04 guest.  My guest will stay up for quite a long time (in the order of a day) but at some point in time, the input will lock up.  I'm experiencing this whilst developing in VS Code; the guest is running, databases it hosts are accessible, and the caret is blinking on the screen.  I'm not sure if it's a key and/or mouse combination that causes it.

[0x48756773]

I've been able to reproduce the issue. It looks like if you're holding an arrow key down while the VM loses focus, it goes into a locked up state.

How to reproduce:

On your VM, open a large text file and hold the arrow key down. While doing this, move your mouse off the VM Screen and click.

You'll notice that immediately the VM will no longer accept input. CTRL ALT DEL also doesn't function.

Once you're in this state, the only fix is to restart.

Video showing the issue is attached. 

[Blazinfatherted]

I'm going to join the 17.5 me too I=same issue 

[Korbinian]

ok, so its now over for me....

after removing the enhanced keyboard driver, removing all hyper-v and trying various tweaks I now revert back to 17.0.0 (.1 and .2 wont work as well as network wont work ... was fixed in 17.5... that wont work without this crap here )

Really dont know how this could have passed VMWare testing

[0x48756773]

I ended up reverting back to 17.0 as well and that does fix the issue. I haven't been able to reproduce this issue in 17.0.2, so I would recommend downgrading to 17 until VMWare can get this issue fixed. 

[ssill2]

Follow up to my previous post.  This has worked for me all week.  I'm still on 17.5 on windows 11 with the hyper-v hypervisor.  Hopefully this helps others. 

> So I'm still going for a few days without this issue.
> going into the vm settings and changing the setting to not try to use the enhanced keyboard driver, if available, so far has fixed the
> issue for me.  I've done this on all my vms and not just the one where the issue happened nearly every day.
> I didn't want to go through the trouble of reverting versions.

[xGROMx]

17.0.2 seems the last good version for me.  Sadly, looks like VMware Workstation is joining the ranks of apps and companies acquired by Boradcom going down the drain. R.I.P VMware after all those years

[0x48756773]

It's disappointing to see that such a large issue hasn't even received a reply from any VMWare employee. Not to mention the inability to report bugs without having a support agreement is a bit ridiculous. 

[Technogeezer]

---

@0x48756773 wrote:

It's disappointing to see that such a large issue hasn't even received a reply from any VMWare employee. Not to mention the inability to report bugs without having a support agreement is a bit ridiculous. 

---

This is an end user to end user community forum. VMware employees do not monitor this forum on a regular basis and certainly not as part of their day jobs. So it’s not surprising that they haven’t replied (as annoying as it is). This isn’t the first issue we’ve heard crickets on. The only guaranteed way of getting their attention is, unfortunately, to open a Support Request.

[xGROMx]

I contacted VMware support and was told I would have to pay to have support fix that issue\bug and otherwise to eff off to the community forum for help here  yippee ki yay!

[tomastokamrazek]

Yeah I'm slowly transitioning away from VMWare. Two years ago I got rid of ESXi in favor of Proxmox, now I will simply use WSLg or buy a separate working machine.

This is not the first botched Workstation update. I remember an update, that accidentally removed option to enable Dark Theme. Bizzare.

Not to mention constant graphical issues with 3D acceleration. I've had a graphical artifacts and glitches for several years now. Currently I'm enjoying daily Linux MInt Cinnamon crashes. I use Workstation for increased productivity. It starts to be a headache instead.

[0x48756773]

Exactly what I experienced. You would think they would want to be made aware of a pretty serious bug.