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Optimize Mouse for games PER APP

ShaddamIV — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 11:45:21 GMT

First, I love the 2023 Tech Preview. I'm running a Win-11-on-ARM VM on an MBAir (M2) and it's just awesome. Thanks!

Here's my suggestion: some games (or other apps) really want the mouse to be optimized for games. Others don't. It'd be cool to be able to determine for each (Windows) app whether the mouse should be optimized for games, or not optimized, or automatically set.
UI-wise, this could work as follows: Select the mouse settings from Fusion's "settings" menu. Where you have the pull-down "Games: [always optimize][never optimize][auto]", add a link or button "optimize per app" (or similar) - and a (scrollable) list of apps with their individual mouse setting.
This "mouse optimized apps" list is initially empty. When the user has clicked on that link, show a list of all apps installed on Windows, sorted alphabetically. The user selects an app. The app is added to the mouse optimized list, together with three radio buttons (per entry) "optimized", "not opimized" and "auto" (or similar; the "optimized" wording doesn't really feel right). Default is the general setting (e.g. "auto"). The user may now switch the optimization for that app by selecting another option.

Thank you very much and
Have a great day,
Karl

VMware engagement

ralish — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 23:08:02 GMT

I'm not a VMware employee, so have no visibility to what's happening in the company or the team that develops VMware Workstation. There's doubtless things happening I'm not aware of, but as a VMware customer, it's really not a great look that a Technical Preview is launched to solicit customer feedback and there's effectively no engagement by VMware.

I've personally surfaced an issue and a feature request, both unaddressed, and the issue is the survey links for this preview are broken. That was two months ago! Presumably it doesn't matter, as if anyone cared about survey responses, they'd have noticed there aren't any and so fixed it by now. The lack of any engagement by VMware seems to be a common experience among posters.

What's the point of a Technical Preview if the feedback is just left not merely unresolved but not even acknowledged and responded to? People are taking the time to give constructive feedback and it's simply ignored. Doubtless Workstation Pro 17 will be a paid upgrade, and at least for me it's going to be a bitter feeling if I do fork out the upgrade cost knowing my and others' input has simply been ignored.

since i have tons of issues on windows 11 22H2 - will the workstation 22H2 will remedy this?

DrWhoIs — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 09:43:00 GMT

so basically:

- does workstation 22H2 solves the hyperv **bleep** i'm encountering now?

* monitor mode ULM

* very poor vm performance

* extremely slow snapshotting

* unable to install W10 22H2 update in vm's

- how safe is it to use the workstation 22H2 in production environment?

- alternatively: how to get rid of ULM mode in workstation?

* bcdedit to stop hyperv launch doesn't do the trick

* trying to uninstall hyperv using dsim or powershell does not work - i guess cause w11 22H2 installed VBS by default (and uninstalling isn't without risk it seems (Manage Windows Defender Credential Guard (Windows) - Windows security | Microsoft Learn)

When installing an update from Windows Preview, it shows that VMware is not compatible

mark-reijerkerk — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 16:30:10 GMT

Today i got an upgrade to Windows pro preview, release 25231.

When i tried to install that update while W.T.P. is installed i got the following error message from the windows upgrade module.

"VM Workstation, uninstall this app now because it isn't compatible with Windows 11"

I can only install the upgrade when I uninstall VMware Workstation T.P. and after the upgrade install VMWare again.

VMWare Workstation Pro WS-TP-22H2

crimsonyoshi — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 20:04:58 GMT

Good afternoon community!

I've been testing out WS-TP-22H2 for a couple of months in conjunction with Workstation 16.2.x variants for more than a few months on some newer desktop tech. Before I get to firing off a question or three, here's the setup.

Existing infrastructure is Workstation Pro 16.2.x on all client machines. Machines are 5-7 years old (give or take) running Intel procs between 4th to 7th generation (i5/i7 4xxx - 7xxx). Host machines have 32GB of RAM (yes, it's a bunch, but that's beside the point), NVMe SSD's, and Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1 or newer. Two virtual machines are typically run-on top of the host in concurrency. The VM's have two cores each assigned along with 12GB of RAM each and adequate space on the SSD.

Performance on the existing virtual machines for the most part has been uneventful which I can't ask for anything better. User tickets have been nearly nonexistent under the performance category until fairly recently, but we are due for a hardware refresh.

This segues into the purpose of this post. We've been testing out Windows 11 Enterprise on various hardware manufacturer's desktop PC's. Prior to Intel's 12th generation Alder Lake cores where there is a P and E split to the cores, there's not much to report from the status quo there. Everything works similar to the older machines at a slightly higher rate of performance and throughput. However, we ran into the "E-core blockade" problem other users mentioned over the past year or so with Alder Lake. When a virtual machine is created and powered on, if any of the E-cores are enabled and functional at the host BIOS level, the performance of the virtual machine is so atrocious it's well into boat anchor territory. Average power on to Windows 11 login screen times were well over an hour, and the Ctrl+Alt+Insert command to dismiss the lock screen took 7 minutes to execute. I won't get into the metrics for actually logging in and trying to open up Microsoft Word. Watching the host task manager's logical CPU performance graphs had all allocated cores pretty well continuously at 100% usage nonstop. This didn't matter how many cores were allocated as they were all maxed out regardless of quantity allocated.

We were able to have success with Lenovo brand Alder Lake machines as well as ASUS motherboards (BIOS) in that they allowed the E-cores to be disabled in the host BIOS. Once we did that, the VM's booted up just as fast as an 11th gen Intel processor, host logical CPU usage was normal (and never maxed out), and at this point in the testing, everything else was pretty well good across the board. I've seen other threads detailing pinning VM cores to host processors which isn't entirely supported by VMWare. We didn't try that as we wanted to stay within VMWare's technical support field of play going forward. With that limitation, disabling the E-cores appears to have fixed this problem, but I'm hoping this won't be necessary going forward. There was no difference in performance between Workstation 16.2.4 and the technical preview 22H2 with the aforementioned other variables being the same. The takeaway here is in agreement with previous posts in that if an E-core is allocated to the virtual machine, all allocated cores are treated as E-cores regardless of what they actually are, or that something to that effect occurs where we can see all allocated local cores continuously maxed out. As a side note, side channel mitigation enabled, or disabled did not affect performance to this point.

I have a couple of users stress testing 22H2 on Windows 11 Enterprise now (only P-cores enabled on the host), and there's one lingering performance issue which I'm wondering is due to side channel mitigation being enabled. Each user has reported the same problem where randomly during program opening or execution within the VM (could be a web browser opening up, or while typing into an Excel spreadsheet for example) the entire virtual machine will lock up for about 5 seconds, and then release and carry on. Occasionally the virtual machines UI will flood to white or black (more often white) while the freeze occurs. This seems to happen anywhere from 3-7 times a day (some outliers being more frequent). The host doesn't have much going on with it, CPU usage is fairly low as well as RAM and disk usage being low while this occurs. The host does not freeze when the VM does, the host remains totally fine and able to function 100% while the VM is frozen.

The new machines specs are an i7-12700, 32 GB of RAM and an NVMe SSD. Host and VM OS are Windows 11 22H2 Enterprise. The VM has 6 cores assigned along with 16 GB of RAM. Changing core or RAM size does not change freezing behavior. I'll also note that only the one VM is running along with the host while we've been testing this. We have not had both VM's on together yet at this point in testing. The Lenovo machines will full freeze for 5ish seconds as I've mentioned, and the ASUS machines will flicker-freeze for all of half a second, so there seems to be a better handling on the ASUS machines to whatever this problem is.

Has anyone else experienced the freezing I'm mentioning? We will be testing without side channel mitigation tomorrow, but for security reasons, I'd obviously like to keep that feature turned on.

Otherwise so far everything else seems to be fairly status quo!

Thank you for your time.

Delete virtual disk?

whorsfall — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 16:16:26 GMT

It looks like when I delete a virtual disk from a machine even though it deletes the disk from the guest - it does not remove from the host.

Could I please have an option to do that so the files are removed so the space is returned to the host?

Thanks

Ward

Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Co-Existance

whorsfall — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 16:12:26 GMT

i know that a while ago VMware worked with Microsoft to ensure there is peaceful co-existence between VMware and the Hyper-V. Can I assume that is the case for the next released version and tge beta?

Eg Performance should be ok with both turned on and features like Windows core isolation on as well?

Thanks

Ward

Win 10 19045 22H2 kb5018410 BlueScreen (KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED)

tzjtzjtzj — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:55:47 GMT

There is an issue that Windows 10 19045 22H2 displays a BlueScreen (KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED)

when installing in VMWare.

Only the x86 variant is affected here.

CU 09/2022 Preview (2075)

CU 10/2022 kb5018410 (2130)

Tested with integrated iso.

Previous versions work.

If this Windows version is installed in VMWare with a Windows 8.x profile, it works.

Oh yes, your email address does not work: ws-beta@vmware.com

wmare workstation: cannot find headers after kernel update (openSuSE Tumbleweed): what to do?

dmgay — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 18:18:19 GMT

I'm running openSuSE Tumbleweed, which gets updated automatically. After a recent kernel update, I can no longer use VMware because attempts to compile vmmon (and, I think, vmnet) fail with a pop-up error box that says that kernel header files cannot be found.

But they are there, and none of the suggests I jmake with "Browse" work. What should I do?

Workstation Public Tech Preview 22H2 II Released

voidp — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:35:07 GMT

VMWare Workstation Public Tech Preview 22H2 II was released on 2022-09-22.

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/get-download?downloadGroup=WS-PUBTP-22H2

I didn't see a corresponding announcement for this and can't find any release notes.

Oracle linux 7.9 VMs cannot start when kernel upgrade to 5.4.17-2136

haifeng_cn — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 23:29:55 GMT

After yum update， 22h2 cannot start the machins.

VMware Workstation errors with QuickBASIC 4.5 and NVIDIA GPU

Bill_Triplett — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 14:37:56 GMT

Many of us remember with nostalgia. Long ago, we used QuickBASIC version 4.5. Modern QB64 is nice, but there are many programs written for original QuickBASIC which will not run without modification on QB64. For those, VMware can be a life-saver. Simply fire up an older guest operating system, and run the code using the original compiler/interpreter. Right? Well, not exactly.

The attached file summarizes a problem where VMware Workstation generates an error message when the guest machine tries to run one of the simplest of BASIC demo programs. The problem is present with DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11, and Windows 95 guest machines. The file provides links to working virtual machines that demonstrate the problem.

Can anyone run one of the guest machines? See if your host produces the same error. Even more interesting would be if it did not...

Bill Triplett
Lexington Park, MD.

Windows Server 2022 BSOD on guests with multiple vCPUs

ralish — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 21:39:09 GMT

I haven't yet had the chance to test this on the latest tech preview, but Windows Server 2022 guests with recent cumulative updates will bluescreen with UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR if the guest is configured with multiple vCPUs. The only known workaround is to limit the guests to a single vCPU (both socket and core), with the obvious potential performance impact.

Other users have documented this here but there's been no response yet from VMware, nor is it documented in the release notes as a known issue or in the knowledge base. It's definitely still an issue in the latest stable release (v16.2.4). Hopefully this will be fixed in the next release, and ideally should be backported to supported older releases.

If anyone with the tech preview installed is able to confirm if the issue is still present that'd be very helpful, otherwise I'll try and find some time to test myself soon.

Nested hypervisor support under VBS (inc. Device Guard)

ralish — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 21:32:59 GMT

Seeing as the survey links are broken, at least for me (see here), I'm posting on the board instead.

A feature I haven't seen discussed but which would be extremely useful is nested hypervisor support under Hyper-V enabled hosts (i.e. using the Windows Hypervisor Platform). I've posted some thoughts about this before here, but to summarise, if running on a host which is Hyper-V enabled you can't run guests under VMware Workstation which expose Intel VT-x/EPT. I assume the same issue is present if exposing AMD-V/RVI but don't have such a system to test on. Virtualising the IOMMU does work.

The impact is you can't run nested virtualisation scenarios on a system with Hyper-V enabled, be it because you actually use Hyper-V alongside VMware Workstation, or it's a dependency of other features like Device Guard. Where this is particularly frustrating is it blocks running VBS enabled guests as they require VT-x/AMD-V.

This limitation doesn't appear to apply to Hyper-V itself, as such configurations work fine on Hyper-V VMs, which suggests it's technically possible.

Survey links are broken

ralish — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 21:18:10 GMT

Are the survey links broken for everyone else? I was going to respond to one of them, but both the short and detailed survey links aren't actually hyperlinks. They look like it, but once you hover over them you'll see they don't link to anything. Tested on multiple browsers.

Testing Status Update

hanness_rdu — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 20:27:29 GMT

Other than the minor issues discussed so far, everything is looking good. I've been hammering on the Tech Preview pretty heavily and everything is looking solid.

I just wondering if there are any new builds coming anytime soon that we need to hammer on.

Unable to remove a virtual disk from a Win 10 VM in Workstation Tech Preview

hanness_rdu — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 17:41:20 GMT

I don't recall having this issue in the past, but I'm finding that I cannot delete virtual disks from a VM in Tech Preview. Only difference from normal is that I have encryption turned on for this VM. Is that possibly the cause of the issue?

Here is the scenario:

VM is a Windows 10 VM. The Windows virtual disk is an NVMe drive. I added two drives to this VM. When adding a drive the wizard recommends SCSI for the disk so that is what I selected.

Now, I want to remove these two added drives, however, in the GUI the "Remove" button is greyed out.

Am I simply missing something here?

Windows 11 fast encryption, password autogenerate and use of guest on a different machine

Lippolt — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 23:48:22 GMT

Your Windows 11 plans for the future:

Fast Encryption

With the new ‘fast encryption’ mode, only the most critical parts of the virtual machine’s local storage space are encrypted, dramatically improving overall VM performance but providing a secure enclave for sensitive data such as a TPM device. Fast Encryption can be enabled for all VM types from the VM Settings. > Encryption window, or during the New VM walkthrough.

Encryption Key Auto-Generate and Store

To enhance the new fast encryption model, Workstation can auto-generate a password for the user, and the local keychain is used by default to store the encryption key, relieving the user from having to type it in whenever their VM boots.

I still have a problem with the planned scenarios for Windows 11:

as far as I understand it, I can either create a normal, completely encrypted guest, for which I know the password, but have to enter it at every startup, or I use the autogenerated password which is stored in the local key store, in which case I don't have to enter this password every time, but don't know it either.

What will happen if in the second case I want to copy the guest to another computer and start it there? I don't know the password, and I can't get to the password in the initial local keystore. So I have no chance to use the guest on another computer.

I would find it extremely nice if the autogenerated password would be displayed at least once during generation, so that you can save it if necessary. After transferring the guest to another computer, it should be possible to store the memorized password in the local keystore on the new computer.

So far my questions to the topic. Are there possibly other solutions to use the fast encryption without having to enter the password every time and still be able to transport the guest machine to another computer as usual for VMware guests?

Many thanks,
Peter

Installing Win 11 with Legacy BIOS rather than UEFI (yes, I know this is unsupported)

hanness_rdu — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 17:37:12 GMT

I notice that when I attempt to install Windows 11, the option to select BIOS is greyed out and only UEFI is enabled.

I realize fully that this is not a supported method of installation for Windows 11, but it can be done with no difficulties even though unsupported. Bear in mind that many of us use VMware to test various scenarios, including things that are technically unsupported. As a result, it would be nice to see this option not blocked. Maybe a note indicating that this is not a technically supported configuration could be included.

Latest Dev Channel builds of Win 11 fail to install with Workstation Tech Preview

elbert — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 13:53:08 GMT

Attempting to install Win 11 Dev Build 25179 results in a blue screen noting an unsupported processor even when the underlying physical system has a fully supported CPU. This issue also occured when attemping to install Win 11 Dev Build 25179 with VMWare 15 and 16 versions. Win 11 Dev Build 25179 successfully installed on physical host machine. Also tested Win 11 Dev Build 25179 using the "LabConfig" registry settings during setup installation on Oracle Virtual Box, installation was succesfull. Additionally tested installation on host machine with Intel i9-9900K CPU and installation was successful on all version of VMWare (15, 16, and Tech Preview) Previous builds before 25179 installed successfully on all host machines.

Test scenario:

Host machine

Win 11 22H2

32GB RAM

Intel i7-11700

VMware Config

Installing Win 11 Dev Channel build 25179

TPM installed

8GB RAM assigned

1 CPU and 2 cores assigned

Encryption set to encrypt only necessary files

Secure boot not enabled

UEFI BIOS selected