Slow Mouse Movement after Upgrade to 4.1

[JT100]

Hi,

after upgrading my testserver from ESXi 4.0 U2 to Hypervisor 4.1 the mouse movement in the remote Console of vSphere Client ist very slow and it is hard to use.

This Problem occurs with Win 7 x64 or Win 2008 R2 as guest os only.

Remoting Win 2003 (x86) or Win XP (x86) guest works fine - no such issues.

I found this problem with VMWare Tools Version 4.xxx and V 8.x both .

Before updating to 4.1 remoting the Win 2008 R2 guest worked fine.

Does anybody else have this problems?

Does anybody have an idea how to solve it?

[vaditch]

Here's an update

Actually WDDM driver works fine The second root of the problem was the mouse driver. All my VMs had no USB controller installed, causing Windows to install PS/2 compartible mouse driver. Adding USB controller to VM hardware improves the mouse movement dramatically. You don't even have to reboot!

A lot of thanks to Virgile for this post: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1411047

[IzakSmit]

Yes adding a USB Controller made a huge difference on my side as well, not only on the mouse movement, but the overall response of my VM's increased -windows explorer opens faster, the start-->program files menu is showing quicker. Even SQLServer Management studio loads and response a bit faster

Thanks for this info!

[stevemor]

Here is what I found on vSphere 4.1 client with windows 2008 svr VM:

There are 2 ways to access the console. One way

has the slow mouse than cannot always access the whole screen. The

other has no mouse problems.

to access the good console with no mouse problem:

Inventory

Virtual machine

Open console

or click the icon that says "launch virtual machine console"

The mouse is ok even after ctrl-alt-enter

to open a full screen window from here.

to access the bad console that has the mouse problem:

click on the console tab

which is found to the right of the events tab

and to the left of the permissions tab.

The mouse problem persists even after ctrl-alt-enter

to open a full screen window from here.

[taylorb]

So I have to find time to manually install drivers and reboot 100's of production VM's? I will just tell all the business units to stop working for 2 days so I can take care of that. That should be no problem at all.

Thanks VMware!

[deputycag]

I am new to ESXi and vmware and ran into same problem with Windows 2008R2. Had the Standard VGA Drive and Full Hardware Accelration. I installed the driver for VMware SVGA II located under C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\Video. Once I installed it it helped a little. But then I went back and noticed hardware acceleration was low again. I enabled Hardware Acceleration after installing this driver and problem was gone. Mouse is working perfect.

[RobGirard]

I was getting quite frustrated with this myself. My XP & 2003 boxes have no problem at all, but W2K8 boxes are dead-dog slow.On my Windows 2008 R2 boxes, these steps have worked for me repeatedly on my ESXi 4.1 boxes:

I am Assuming you have plenty of bandwidth & no firewall issues between your vSphere client & ESXi host (although you really shouldn't need that much for an MKS/KVM session...):

While your display adapter is set to SVGA, go to the Troubleshoot tab and change Hardware acceleration to FULL.

NOTE: If you've already changed your driver over to "VMware SVGA 3D (Microsoft Copororation - WDDM), you will see that your HW Accel option is greyed out. In this case, I rolled my driver back so it defaulted back to "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter", and then rebooted when prompted.

With Hardware Acceleration set to FULL, click OK 3 times, until you close all properties and are at the desktop.

Back into Display properties, Advanced, Adapter, Driver - Change: Manually choose the driver from c:\program files\common files\vmware\drivers\wddm_video and click Next, then Close, Close,[DO YOU WANT TO RESTART YOUR COMPUTER? - NO. On your advanced display settings screen, press the last OK, and then hit YES for the reboot.

This 1-2-punch combo worked on most of my Windows 2008 R2 servers, but I still have one that is stubborn and holding out, refusing to perform well. Yes, it's a bit of a voodoo dance, but it seems to work well.

Rest assured, when the video is working correctly, your mouse will move

as fast as if you were local, just like on your Windows 2003 boxes where

the difference between HW Accell = none & full makes a HUGE

difference,getting the right driver on W2K8 does too.

As for the one that is holding out, I think I built it from a template that I originally had on VMware Workstation 7 with a newer version of VMtools than the ones registered in ESXi. I had to uninstall, then install VMtools from within ESXi to make it happy.

On the surface, I looked at the config of 2 servers, and the one that has responsive video is using an LSI Logic Parallel controller (it was a P2V), has less RAM (3584MB) & 1 vcpu...... and the laggy one has LSI SAS controller, 2 vcpu's and more RAM (4096). I'm quite sure I have other VMs with both controllers and there is no problem, as well as different mixes of more and less RAM & vcpu. Anyway... more digging to see if I can find out what's so different about my laggy one.

I will compare my vmx files and see if I can draw any conclusions from the various VMs in my environment, but I'll post them here as well in case you, the crowd, find them quicker and also have something to compare to your own VM's. There's a possibility that the problem is in Windows (cached driver? old/newer versions?), but for now I'm keeping my search lower.

-

---

LAGGY VM - VMX FILE----

---

_{.encoding = "UTF-8"}

_{config.version = "8"}

_{virtualHW.version = "7"}

_{pciBridge0.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge4.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge4.functions = "8"}

_{pciBridge5.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge5.functions = "8"}

_{pciBridge6.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge6.functions = "8"}

_{pciBridge7.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge7.functions = "8"}

_{vmci0.present = "true"}

_{nvram = "VM_WITH_SLOW_VIDEO.nvram"}

_{virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"}

_{powerType.powerOff = "soft"}

_{powerType.powerOn = "hard"}

_{powerType.suspend = "hard"}

_{powerType.reset = "soft"}

_{displayName = "VM_WITH_SLOW_VIDEO"}

_{extendedConfigFile = "VM_WITH_SLOW_VIDEO.vmxf"}

_{floppy0.present = "true"}

_{numvcpus = "2"}

_{scsi0.present = "true"}

_{scsi0.sharedBus = "none"}

_{scsi0.virtualDev = "lsisas1068"}

_{memsize = "4096"}

_{scsi0:0.present = "true"}

_{scsi0:0.fileName = "VM_WITH_SLOW_VIDEO.vmdk"}

_{scsi0:0.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"}

_{sched.scsi0:0.shares = "normal"}

_{sched.scsi0:0.throughputCap = "off"}

_{ide1:0.present = "true"}

_{ide1:0.clientDevice = "true"}

_{ide1:0.deviceType = "atapi-cdrom"}

_{ide1:0.startConnected = "false"}

_{floppy0.startConnected = "false"}

_{floppy0.fileName = ""}

_{floppy0.clientDevice = "true"}

_{ethernet0.present = "true"}

_{ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"}

_{ethernet0.networkName = "VM-TEST"}

_{ethernet0.addressType = "vpx"}

_{ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:50:56:8f:00:0f"}

_{svga.vramSize = "8388608"}

_{chipset.onlineStandby = "false"}

_{disk.EnableUUID = "true"}

_{guestOS = "windows7srv-64"}

_{uuid.bios = "42 0f b3 01 23 c4 9f 3f-68 42 0a 4a 9a 8d c7 d9"}

_{vc.uuid = "50 0f c8 51 cf b4 69 4a-85 f2 84 4c 71 a7 eb 73"}

_{log.fileName = "vmware.log"}

_{snapshot.action = "keep"}

_{sched.cpu.min = "0"}

_{sched.cpu.units = "mhz"}

_{sched.cpu.shares = "normal"}

_{sched.mem.minsize = "0"}

_{sched.mem.shares = "normal"}

_{tools.upgrade.policy = "manual"}

_{ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "192"}

_{evcCompatibilityMode = "TRUE"}

_{guestCPUID.0 = "0000000b756e65476c65746e49656e69"}

_{guestCPUID.1 = "000106a400010800809822010febfbff"}

_{guestCPUID.80000001 = "00000000000000000000000128100800"}

_{hostCPUID.0 = "0000000b756e65476c65746e49656e69"}

_{hostCPUID.1 = "000106a510100800009ce3bdbfebfbff"}

_{hostCPUID.80000001 = "00000000000000000000000128100800"}

_{pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"}

_{pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"}

_{pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"}

_{pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"}

_{pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"}

_{replay.supported = "FALSE"}

_{scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "160"}

_{scsi0.sasWWID = "50 05 05 61 23 c4 9f 30"}

_{scsi0:0.redo = ""}

_{userCPUID.0 = "0000000b756e65476c65746e49656e69"}

_{userCPUID.1 = "000106a510100800009822010febfbff"}

_{userCPUID.80000001 = "00000000000000000000000128100800"}

_{vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "32"}

_{vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "8388608"}

_{unity.wasCapable = "TRUE"}

_{ctkEnabled = "true"}

_{scsi0:0.ctkEnabled = "true"}

_{replay.filename = ""}

_{ethernet0.startConnected = "TRUE"}

_{tools.deployPkg.fileName = ""}

_{sched.mem.max = "4096"}

_{vmci0.id = "-1701984295"}

_{tools.syncTime = "FALSE"}

_{uuid.location = "56 4d 69 7d 54 8b 66 5d-01 c5 fc 5a 75 98 f6 24"}

_{cleanShutdown = "FALSE"}

_{sched.swap.derivedName = "/vmfs/volumes/4cbe09d8-2f8e4b4f-0bd4-d8d385be41e4/VM_WITH_SLOW_VIDEO/VM_WITH_SLOW_VIDEO-40ad3d61.vswp"}

-

---

RESPONSIVE VM - VMX FILE----

---

_{.encoding = "UTF-8"}

_{config.version = "8"}

_{virtualHW.version = "7"}

_{pciBridge0.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge4.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge4.functions = "8"}

_{pciBridge5.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge5.functions = "8"}

_{pciBridge6.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge6.functions = "8"}

_{pciBridge7.present = "true"}

_{pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"}

_{pciBridge7.functions = "8"}

_{vmci0.present = "true"}

_{nvram = "VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO.nvram"}

_{virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"}

_{powerType.powerOff = "soft"}

_{powerType.powerOn = "hard"}

_{powerType.suspend = "hard"}

_{powerType.reset = "soft"}

_{displayName = "VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO"}

_{extendedConfigFile = "VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO.vmxf"}

_{scsi0.present = "true"}

_{scsi0.sharedBus = "none"}

_{scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"}

_{memsize = "3584"}

_{scsi0:0.present = "true"}

_{scsi0:0.fileName = "VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO.vmdk"}

_{scsi0:0.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"}

_{sched.scsi0:0.shares = "normal"}

_{sched.scsi0:0.throughputCap = "off"}

_{scsi0:1.present = "true"}

_{scsi0:1.fileName = "VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO_1.vmdk"}

_{scsi0:1.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"}

_{sched.scsi0:1.shares = "normal"}

_{sched.scsi0:1.throughputCap = "off"}

_{ide0:0.present = "true"}

_{ide0:0.clientDevice = "true"}

_{ide0:0.deviceType = "atapi-cdrom"}

_{ide0:0.startConnected = "false"}

_{ethernet0.present = "true"}

_{ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"}

_{ethernet0.networkName = "VM-TEST"}

_{ethernet0.addressType = "vpx"}

_{ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:50:56:8f:00:06"}

_{svga.vramSize = "8388608"}

_{disk.EnableUUID = "true"}

_{guestOS = "windows7srv-64"}

_{uuid.bios = "56 4d 71 58 89 50 e5 7c-18 7c 2e cf 2a d0 fc bd"}

_{vc.uuid = "52 8b da 35 d4 c5 cb 10-68 8b 98 84 90 78 fa eb"}

_{log.fileName = "vmware.log"}

_{snapshot.action = "keep"}

_{sched.cpu.min = "0"}

_{sched.cpu.units = "mhz"}

_{sched.cpu.shares = "normal"}

_{sched.mem.minsize = "0"}

_{sched.mem.shares = "normal"}

_{tools.upgrade.policy = "manual"}

_{replay.supported = "FALSE"}

_{replay.filename = ""}

_{pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"}

_{pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"}

_{pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"}

_{pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"}

_{pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"}

_{scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"}

_{ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "160"}

_{vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "33"}

_{vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "8388608"}

_{hostCPUID.0 = "0000000b756e65476c65746e49656e69"}

_{hostCPUID.1 = "000106a510100800009ce3bdbfebfbff"}

_{hostCPUID.80000001 = "00000000000000000000000128100800"}

_{guestCPUID.0 = "0000000b756e65476c65746e49656e69"}

_{guestCPUID.1 = "000106a400010800809822010febfbff"}

_{guestCPUID.80000001 = "00000000000000000000000128100800"}

_{userCPUID.0 = "0000000b756e65476c65746e49656e69"}

_{userCPUID.1 = "000106a510100800009822010febfbff"}

_{userCPUID.80000001 = "00000000000000000000000128100800"}

_{evcCompatibilityMode = "TRUE"}

_{ctkEnabled = "true"}

_{tools.remindInstall = "FALSE"}

_{sched.scsi1:0.throughputCap = "off"}

_{scsi0:0.ctkEnabled = "true"}

_{scsi0:0.redo = ""}

_{scsi0:1.ctkEnabled = "true"}

_{unity.wasCapable = "TRUE"}

_{scsi0:1.redo = ""}

_{sched.mem.max = "3584"}

_{vmci0.id = "718339261"}

_{tools.syncTime = "FALSE"}

_{uuid.location = "56 4d e7 9c 2d 23 fb 50-de 15 9b ba 01 e5 db f0"}

_{cleanShutdown = "FALSE"}

_{migrate.hostlog = "./VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO-4a4c286e.hlog"}

_{sched.swap.derivedName = "/vmfs/volumes/4c9187ab-37635702-b7a6-d8d385be41e2/VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO/VM_WITH_FAST_VIDEO-4a4c286e.vswp"}

_{scsi0:2.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"}

_{scsi0:3.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"}

_{floppy0.present = "FALSE"}

Looking forward to having a silver bullet for ALL my VM's console sessions....

Cheers,

Rob

[jpf71]

Ich bin zurzeit im Urlaub.

In dringenden Fällen wenden Sie sich bitte an Frau Pollmann (07541/203-1160, r.pollmann@friedrichshafen.de)

Ab dem 2.November bin ich wieder erreichbar.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jürgen Pflüger

Stadtverwaltung Friedrichshafen

Server & Firewall Administration

HPA / IuK

Adenauerplatz 1

88045 Friedrichshafen

Tel: +49-(0)7541-203-1162

Fax: +49-(0)7541-203-81162

Mail: j.pflueger@friedrichshafen.de

[ramidean]

Updating the vid drvrs to SVGA II and full hw accel did the trick! Thanks!

[RobGirard]

Here's a quick update:

1. Doesn't matter the driver... SVGA II, SVGA, VMWare SVGA 3D, and HW Acceleration (for SVGA & SVGA II only) - The mouse is choppy & video is laggy. This applies to some of my Windows 2008 R2 VMs, but not all. To the ones that have trouble, nothing seems to work.

2. The problem exists within Windows. I took a problematic W2K8 R2 that is configured for LSI SAS driver and non-problematic one and swapped vmdk's to boot them up in each others' Virtual machine configs. The good VM stayed good in the other's vmx, and the problematic one stayed problematic.

3. The problematic VM's seem to have more issues with their VMTools install. Although VMTools is running and the state is "OK", small things such as releasing the mouse when you hit the console's border is not working.

4. I have uninstalled/re-installed VMTools using several techniques (1. VM - Install VMTools; 2. Reconfigure - then use converter to install the tools; 3. VUM - Install VMtools into a guest). In each case, no trouble with the installs and the tools report success. However, the problems still exist: Poor video, and the mouse can't leave the console without CTRL + ALT

5. I dumped the registry keys for the PCI Enum & Video parameters and compared them using WinDiff. Almost identical, with 2 slight differences:

A.Problematic vs non-problematic has different oemxx.inf references. My troubled VM referred to oem9.inf and my good VM referred to oem18.inf. I checked all the driver caches and found these files and all associated driver versions to be be identical. Upon deeper inspection of additional VMs, I found that all of them have different reference numbers, such as oem12.inf. This appears to be serialized by windows based on the order that drivers are installed on the system and I believe this can be dismissed as not the fix.

B. Problematic VM's had these 2 values that the good VMs didn't have: Please see the attached .zip containing reg files (renamed to .txt for your safety!) if you'd like to compare them yourself

"Device Description"="Standard VGA Graphics Adapter"

"Acceleration.Level"=dword:00000004

.....HOWEVER, both good and bad had this in the Settings Key one node deeper:

"Device Description"="VMware SVGA 3D (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM)"

"Acceleration.Level"=dword:00000004

I tried deleting the 2 values that were in the root class node ( ), but that made no difference. On both good and problematic systems, the Class ID was the same: 4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318

5. I used procmon to capture the boot process of both VMs at start to try and find where my problematic VMTools instances are derailing. I am still trolling throught the millions of lines and will update again once I find something worth noting.

If someone else is digging deep as well, hopefully some of this info helps.

Cheers,

Rob

[RobGirard]

Great News! For everyone who's been as frustrated with Windows 2008 R2 VMs as I've been,_ I have a resolution! _ :smileygrin:

The video driver was only half of the problem.... the mouse driver was the other half! And with the correct mouse driver installed ("VMware Pointing Device"), my system feels as good as RDP again, and is on par with my other Windows 2008 R2 systems that are working fast. Although my instructions below are instended for Windows 2008 R2, there's a good chance that the same issue will fix poor-performing Win 7 & Vista VMs....

WARNING - A REBOOT IS REQUIRED

The fix is quite simple. Open Device Manager, and navigate down to "Mouse and other pointing devices", and expand it.

Listed you will see "PS/2 Compatible Mouse". Right-click and choose "Update Driver Software".

Choose the 2nd option "Browse my computer for driver software".

Although you can browse to the driver location, don't. Click the 2nd option:"Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"

Click "Have Disk..."

Browse to "C:\program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\Drivers\Mouse" and click "OK"

You will be brought back to the "Select the deive driver" screen and listed should be 1 device: VMware Pointing Device".Highlight it and click Next

You will get a message stating Windows is installing driver, then click Close when it completes.

You will now be prompted for a reboot, so click Yes to restart.

When your VM comes back up, you should notice that your mouse now moves in and out of the Console seemlessly.

NOTE: If you try to update the driver through Control Panel | Mouse | Hardware, you will find that the Update Driver option is greyed out. This must be done through Device Manager.

On my VM's that VM Tools seemed to work properly right from the start, I did find that in Control Panel | Mouse | Hardware, there were 2 other devices along side VMware Pointing Device. They are both identical and called "HID-compliant mouse". These do not appear on my VM's that I just fixed w/ the VMware Pointing Device, but don't seem to be affected by not having it.

I am thinking that this is just the tip of the iceberg. When comparing the bootlogs I generated with ProcMon, I found a number of differences between the way VMTools load on each VM. I will dig a little deeper and if I find anything worth posting, I'll post it.

Although just a hunch, even through VM Tools says it's installed and working, I don't think any of the intended drivers were actually loaded into the system. Again, if I find anything worth posting (ie. key scsi drivers or others aren't being used and performance suffers), I'll post.

Hope this helps the remaining few like myself that have been totally frustrated with console performance!

Cheers,

Rob

[BenConrad]

Now I remember why I was not running the VMware SVGA II drivers, they randomly lock up the console. On virt hw v4 I can't run the WDDM so I'm stuck with Standard VGA Graphics Adapter on Windows 2008 R2 for now.

Good work Rob, I've been messing with this issue this past afternoon. Here is what I did:

- Grabbed tools from a 4.1 VM, so I'm running v8.3.2_257589 on my VMs. That helped but not much.

- As suggested, a combo of removing and re-installing the display and mouse adapters fixed my issue.

I'm currently running the 'VMware SVGA II' adapter on the virtual hw v4 VMs. After the install I did notice that HW acceleration was set to one tick above 'none' after the re-install so that needed to be set to full. Also, one indication of the mouse issue is that my mouse was not automatically releasing when I switched between my desktop and the VM. I used the tools to uninstall the mouse and then re-installed, that's working now.

I'm about 15ms away from these VMs and the mouse is now smooth as glass, just about as good as RDP.

Ben

[zdr]

This is incredible... Seems like VMware development did not even BOOT the new version with actual VMs on it, and test if mouse works or not? I tried everything and now going back to 4.0. 4.1 is pretty much useless with this bug. Here's an idea: rename 4.0 to 4.2 and it can actually pass for an upgrade.

On top of that, I cannot add 4.1 hosts to 4.0 server... very, very disappointing.

[1goofyguy]

OK - I recently installed a new ESXi 4.1 server and loaded several images,  I had a 2003 R2 SP2 image that I had to convert to a local workstation, then converted back to an ESXi image.  When it converted back to the ESXi server image, I had the slow, choppy mouse that would not move off the image without the old Ctrl-Alt keystroke.  After reading all the posts here, got to thinking about the mouse driver and decided as a last ditch effort to reload the latest VMTools.   ZAMM - that did the trick

I still cant believe it was so simple, but I remembered that the VMTools loaded a mouse driver so thought it would be worth trying.  Glad I did.  Hope this helps someone else. 

[Kosch]

I'm having alot of trouble with a brand new fresh Windows 2008 R2 template on ESX 4.0 Build 332073 using guest hardware version 7.

I've resolved the issue of the OS locking up by following the KB to upgrade the video memory to 32MB and then changing the driver to the WDM.

We have a few situation where RDP cant be used and the mouse performance is terrible. I've been following the great suggestions on the this thread so far but still no luck. Is there anything else to be done?

[troymatt]

I have had several Server 2008 VMs behave like this.  Our app only runs on 2008 (x86), not R2, so I can't give an answer on that, but just like server 2003 the hardware acceleration needs to be turned up!.  The VMtools asks, and opens the tab on 2003, but nothing like that on 2008.  I right clicked the desktop -> preferences -> display settings -> advanced settings -> trouble shooting -> then crank up the hardware acceleration!

Got all my servers running great now!

Troy

[zdr]

It seems I have different issue from everyone else: ALL win machines are broken with slow mouse movement in Vi Client 4.1. ESX host is still at 4.0. If I connect to VI Center 4.1 with VI client 4.1, all machines are slow; if I connect to host directly with VI Client 4.0, all works fast. Also, I am accessing the win2k3 machine with VI Client through Remote Deskop in console mode.

So:

1. RDP to Win2K3->VI CLient 4.1->VCenter 4.1->ESX Host 4.0> slow mouse on ALL win machines

2. RDP to Win3K3->VI Client 4.0->ESX host 4.0-> fast mouse on all win machines

3. VI Client 4.1->VCenter 4.1->ESX Host 4.0-> FAST!

So the issue seems to be with VI Client 4.1 and RDP!

[andreashutah]

Thank you RobGirard for this information about the mouse driver! The mouse and video drivers were the culprit. I initially reinstalled VMWare tools in the guests but that did not install the mouse and video drivers correctly, even though the device manager said they were installed. If VMWare wants to get an upper edge on HyperV, it is a real shame and gives VMWare a black eye that uninstalling and reinstalling VMWare tools does not automatically take care of these issues. This issue is several months old, and they still have not fixed it.

In order to get this to work, just like you said, I had to follow these steps exactly to reinstall the mouse driver, as installing VMWare tools did not do it for me.

Additionally, I had to install the correct video driver as per:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101170....

(I don't understand why VMWare doesn't put all of their drivers in the same 'drivers', which threw me off in the above article)

Lastly, I increased the hardware acceleration to full.

Once done, the mouse lag and choppines was gone. 3 hours of my life I wish I hadn't spent trying to find the solution to this silly problem.

[taylorb]

Once done, the mouse lag and choppines was gone. 3 hours of my life I wish I hadn't spent trying to find the solution to this silly problem.

Three hours?  Count yourself lucky.  That's 10 minutes per server and I have hundreds of windows VMs.   I still haven't fixed half of them and it has been almost year since I upgraded.  

[xandor]

I found another hint to install the video driver for Windows 2008 R2 by the command line. Just do it as 'Run as Administrator':

pnputil.exe -i -a "c:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video\vm3d.inf"

This will add and install the driver. After the required reboot the mouse is working fine when using the console thru the VI client.

[andreashutah]

As a follow-up, on a Windows 7 x64 machine, for some reason, the installation of the drivers in the WDDM_VIDEO folder did not work. I had to use the drivers in the VIDEO folder,

• Open Device Manager and navigate down to "Display Adapters" and expand it.
• Right-click on the video driver listed and choose "Update Driver Software".
• Choose the 2nd option "Browse my computer for driver software".
• Although you can browse to the driver location, don't.  Click the 2nd option:"Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer"
• Click "Have Disk..."
• Browse to "C:\program Files\Common Files\VMWare\VMware\Drivers\Video" and click "OK"
• You will be brought back to the  "Select the deive driver" screen and listed should be 1 device: VMware SVGA II. Highlight it and click Next
• You will get a message stating Windows is installing driver, then click Close when it completes.
• Restart the machine.