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

[Kinnison]

Hello,

Honestly, I have never understood exactly what concrete benefits the so-called "enhanced keyboard driver" produces, at least I have not found any particularly relevant ones that would justify its installation. Never installed and will continue not to install "that driver".

Regards,
Ferdinando

[Arjan56]

I am also seeing this behaviour but I do not have the enhanced keyboard driver installed.

It appears to be related to the arrow keys and holding one pressed down for too long after a certain amount of time.

The button will remain pressed inside the VM and the VM refuses all other keyboard / mouse input but is not actually locked up.

In my case I could ssh into my vm and reboot it, I'm assuming RDP also works on windows VM's.

This behaviour started immediately after the last 17.5.0 update.

[d16rogers]

After working for a few minutes (< 5min), the keyboard (*not* the enhanced keyboard driver) just stopped working in an Ubuntu 22.04 guest OS. Host is Windows 11 Pro on Dell XPS 15. This happened to a colleague of mine, too, so it's unlikely to be tied to a particular user's configuration (though we do have the same model host machines).

I can ssh to the guest so I know it's running just fine. The clock updates, too, so the UI itself is running. If I reboot the host+guest, the keyboard comes back for a few minutes then dies again. So this is probably a guest tools problem. I've got the latest installed via `apt`. I get the status messages about using Ctrl+G and Alt+Ctrl, but no luck actually typing into the guest VM through the UI.

[d16rogers]

Also, the mouse fails to work through the guest UI. Clicking, selecting, etc. Pausing and resuming the virtual machine does not help.

I will uninstall this version until I see a fix or workaround posted (updated openvm tools?). My colleague did the same. Too bad because two annoying problems we were having were fixed in this release: slow Ubuntu server booting and inability to use bridged network).

@Korbiniancould you change the title to remove the "enhanced" part since this doesn't seem to be related to just the enhanced keyboard driver? Or did the regular keyboard driver work for you?

[Kinnison]

Hello,

In my opinion it is difficult to establish what is the root cause of the problem, because reading the various posts there is no obvious correlation between the "host" and "guest" operating systems. Personally, this latest version did not particularly impress me, immediately after the update certain virtual machines no longer started due to obscure "ownership" problems of the ".vmx" files which could not even be "acquired" (in a simple, practical way).

Regards,
Ferdinando

[jgodfrey]

Same issues, input seems to suddenly stop on the VM but network connectivity continues working.  I had several Linux installs just hang today in the Workstation window, while I could ssh into them and try to debug within.  They seemed to be running just fine otherwise.  Only way I could get the input back was to restart the VM.  Completely uninstalled 17.5.5 and restarted the OS (Win11, btw).  Reinstalled 17.0.2, skipping the enhanced kb driver, and things have been flawlessly stable since.  I guess I'll wait for the 17.5.1 build 😉

[VisualGPS]

I too have tha keyboard and mouse problem - both become unusable. Easy to reproduce using chrom in Ubuntu 22.04. The enhanced keyboard is not used.

Simply open up Chrome, press ctrl+mouse wheel to zoom and then it stops. The VM is still active because i can ssh into the vm. The keyboard and mouse are not processed. Down grading - to  17.0.2

[Korbinian]

Hi,

in my case after removing of the driver and a complete re-install of Workstation 17.5. the problem went away. However, I'm not using the "native" virtualization of Workstation but the HyperV one as I have podman running on my windows 10 host OS.

[Korbinian]

-duplicate-

[behm015]

My specs:

Host System: Windows 11 Enterprise

Build: 22621.2428

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz

RAM: 32,0 GB (31.8 GB usable)

Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro T1000 (4GB)

Hyper-V is enforced (cannot turn it off)

I  do NOT have the Enhanced Keyboard Drivers installed.

VM:

Kubuntu 22.04 (tried with Ubuntu 22.04, same problems)

RAM: 16 GB 

Processors (1 CPU, 6 cores /cpu)

Two SATA Disks

USB 3.1

3D Graphics acceleration is disabled. (Display)

One shared folder which is always enabled

Copy & Paste and Drag & Drop is enabled

Time Sync is enabled

No auto login

firmware type is bios

(memory page trimming is disabled)

Side channel mitigations are disabled

I have the exact same symptoms where I open Google Chrome (google.com) and then trigger a complete input "freeze" by pressing ctrl + mouse scroll (up/down) which then prevents any further input and only leaves me with a complete restart of the VM preventing me from working....

The VM is not frozen, as I am able to SSH into is using Putty and it is responsive.

A hotfix (which is not a long term solution, as the vm becomes unusable for development) that I found is that you can reduce the number of CPUs and cores/CPU to 1 for each.

With 1 cpu and 1 core/cpu I was not able to respoduce the input freeze using Google Chrome (ctrl + scroll).

Fun fact:

While my VM is running, I am able to increase the number of CPUs to 4 (or even more) and Google Chrome still does not freeze.

If I reboot my VM, then it starts to freeze again when trying to zoom in and out using ctrl + scroll up/down

[alteramaxplus]

Just posting to say "me too" ... keyboard and mouse input just lock up solid after some minimal VM use (Ubuntu VM on Win10 in my case).

I'm downgrading to 17.0.2 as we speak, VM is basically unusable on 17.5

[Carbonates]

Adding a me too. I was just working, and suddenly, the mouse and keyboard stopped responding. I can force a guest OS reboot, and it works again. Tried both the Enhanced keyboard AND the standard.

This happens repeatedly and always after "a little while" regardless of how much the VM is doing.

[behm015]

UPDATE:

Even with 1 cpu and 1 cpu/core I am still experiencing the issue that the keyboard and mouse input do not work after a random period of time.... it seemingly just takes longer.

[xGROMx]

WOW unbelievable 17.5.0 broke all if my VMs.  I tried reinstalling like four times, tried to remove the keyboard driver but the issue is not just the keyboard.  Everything stops and freezes, all my Linux VMs are dead.  Is there an official fix form VMware or all is downhill now with Boradcom? Pretty sad and disappointing.

[AdamTher]

Same issue here, i hit Backspace too fast and suddenly my mouse wont click but moves and the keyboard is totally unresponsive. The VM itself is active and functional just zero control.

17.5 Broke my VMs and I cant roll back. This is so bad.

Debian 11 Host (up to date)

Debian 11 VM (fresh install, up to date)

[Jmanom]

Chipping in with a "same here"
(Host Windows 11 Pro, Guest: Ubuntu 23.04)

• After a few minutes keyboard input and mouse input is no longer possible although even the cursor still blinks.

• Only killing and restarting the guest brought control back.
• Nothing seen with high memory usage ( so did not try to replace
• I might have installed the enhanced driver in the update (but I am not sure it was not installed already)

Downgraded to Version 17.0.2 and waiting for response from vmware (highly unsatisfied)

[Arjan56]

So is it just Linux VM's that are affected ? It might be an open-vm-tools vs 17.5.0 issue if that's the case.

[gantonjo-tnm]

At least it fails for me too with an AlmaLinux 9 VM inside VMWare Workstation Pro 17.5.0. Looking forward to a solution as I "upgraded" my VM to 17.5.x Hardware Compatibility, hence I cannot downgrade VMWare to 17.0.2, I guess.

[RDPetruska]

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@gantonjo-tnm wrote:

At least it fails for me too with an AlmaLinux 9 VM inside VMWare Workstation Pro 17.5.0. Looking forward to a solution as I "upgraded" my VM to 17.5.x Hardware Compatibility, hence I cannot downgrade VMWare to 17.0.2, I guess.

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You can downgrade the virtual hardware of the VM.  Then you can uninstall 17.5.0 and reinstall 17.0.2.