Mouse and keyboard not working.

[BobIsLost]

Hello, I have used Workstation for years and have always been able to find all my own answers. Now I am stumped.

I recent used vCenter Converter to convert a laptop that I was not using any longer and selling. I grab all the files that I can think of to save onto the new laptop and then I save a copy of the laptop as a VM just in case I miss something. I converted the laptop, saved all the files to my desktop and a month later I need something from it and the mouse and keyboard do not work when I try to start it up.

I have tried using two keyboards and mice and connecting one set directly to the VM. I have tried editing the .vmx file a dozen times using everything that I have found on this site and other sites. I have tried rebuilding the .vmx file by deleting it and creating a new VM by using the same virtual disk. Everything I have tried has resulted in the same thing. Neither the keyboard or the mouse work in the VM. The VM starts just fine and it gets to the screen that you click on to get the logon.

I tried booting to safe mode but I cannot get into safe mode. From what I have seen, to get into safe mode I need to hit F8 when the OS is starting up. I hit F8 repeatedly and either it takes forever to start the OS and it misses the key press or it just sits there as the screen showing VMware in black and white. I even tried using a pencil and book to hold the F8 key down while it was trying to start up to see if I just took longer than 10 minutes. Hours later it was the sitting there laughing at me.

Can someone please give me any other ideas I can try or perhaps correct something that I have already tried to do to get this started?

Thank you very much.

[wila]

Hi,

Most likely the old hardware had a synaptic touchpad and software installed.

This is an issue people sometimes bump into when moving a physical machine to virtual.

The drivers from the touchpad do not work well together with the VMware mouse and keyboard.

It is not synaptic only, but the issue is usually the same.

See also:

Re: HELP my keyboard doesn't work in my virtual machine!

PS: You might be able to use the virtual keyboard to uninstall (or if that doesn't work and you still have the physical hardware, uninstall the drivers there and remigrate) or use an external usb keyboard or.. (well see the thread I reference for ideas)

--

Wil

[BobIsLost]

Hello, thank you for the response.

Yes it did have a synaptics touchpad and I forgot to mention that I did see that it was a problem. Your link did help somewhat, thanks. I will list everything that I tried and what did not work and what I finally ended up doing in case it might help someone else in the future. The virtual keyboard was not an option because both the keyboard and the mouse did not work.

I figured out that I could get into the Windows 10 advanced startup screen by using the menu item VM, power, "reset" function and it allowed me to hit the escape key, F2, F8, F12, whatever, to get there. For some reason restarting the OS normally would never allow me into the advanced startup screen. The advanced startup did not help me. The mouse and keyboard still did not work in safe mode.

I tried to mount the .vmdk file using the File, Map Virtual Disks menu function. That worked sort of. I was able to recover files. However I was not able to get into files that were "admin" protected so I was not able to edit the registry files or anything that mattered for starting up the VM. Recovering the files was the minimum that I needed though so that at least worked.

While I was deleting the VM, I accidentally deleted the wrong VM (stupid). I spent too much time trying to recover the files and then figured out how shadow copies work on windows server and had the files back in seconds.

I tried just using the .vmdk file and creating a new VM in the same directory. For some reason that did not work when I tried creating it in the same directory. It did work when I created the new VM in a new directory and had it use the .vmdk file from the other directory. When it was in the same directory I could not even get it to boot with CD/DVD. I tried multiple copies of Hirens boot CD and multiple ISOs of windows. It never worked. When I created the new directory and created the VM, it booted from the CD/DVD right away. I was then able to start it up into Windows XP and tried editing out anything that had to do with "synaptics". I restarted and still had troubles but at least I was able to get into the VM.

I then set up and new Windows 10 VM and added a second drive pointed to the old .vmdk file. It works mostly. I can run old programs (sort of) which is what I really wanted. At least I can get what I missed onto the new laptop.

Those synaptics drivers must really tie mess with VMware. I several different keyboards and mice with up to three sets hooked up at one time with no luck. I did see a dozen or so other pages about the same sort of issues. What an educationally frustrating experience. Again, thank you for the help.