Dear VMWare Community,
The problem I'm going to bring up was observed on different hardware (e.g. X5650, 2700X, ThinkPad laptops) and software (host on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10) configurations. Machines that I typically use have 3 screens. 2 of them are dedicated to virtual machine and one to the host. Virtual machine is Windows Server 2012 R2 which is supposed to occupy two screens.
It was all working fine (and still does after downgrade) up to VMWare Player 12.5.9/8 and problem started with 14.x series. At first I thought I would wait and it would probably go away with the next minor release but nothing like that happened and today we have 15.x with the same problem.
The problem is about mouse pointer stability and occurs only when virtual machine is in multi screen mode. When I switch guest machine to single screen it seems to be working fine, but in the multi screen mode there are problems.The observable behavior is that from time to time (it does not completely prevents you from working with VM, it is rather annoying and considerably reduces your productivity):
* the mouse pointer flickers without reason (especially when its shape is changing);
* the mouse pointer disappears without reason (and does not reappear until mouse is moved);
* the mouse pointer jumps to other location (I think it is usually 0,0 position but hard to tell, because it is invisible) and disappears (in this case usually to get the pointer back /moving your mouse does not help/ I have to first release focus from VM with Ctrl-Alt keys and click on the VM screen);
* the mouse pointer jumps to some other location and you click something completely different than expected;
Flickering and mouse pointer disappearance can be observed very easily in Total Commander (for example). Right click on a folder should display small progress bar for about 1s and then popup menu with a visible mouse cursor. When you try this on single screen (all versions) or multi screen mode with Player 12.5.8/9 it works perfectly well. Wen you try the same in multi screen mode with 14/15 you should see the difference. Progress bar flickering almost make is invisible and after popup menu is shown the mouse pointer is not visible. Of course this is not the only problem - just an example which would let you see what it is all (not all in fact because this case does not cover all the bullets mentioned above).
Some extra facts:
* does not occur in VMs running in single screen mode (even though the host machine can have more than one);
* occurs on VMvare Player since 14.x (12.5.8/9 has no issues at all);
* in all cases latest (matching installed VMWare Player version) VMWare Tools are installed in VM;
* does not depend on guest VM internal settings like (interface or mouse pointer styles);
* observed in different hardware configurations (computers and peripherals, e.g. mouse);
* observed in a clean install environments (Host & VM, e.g. fresh Windows 2012R2 installed in VM + updates + VMWare Tools);
* observed on Radeon & NVidia graphic cards with different drivers (over last year);
I'd like to have it finally fixed (after over a year) because I'm stuck on 12.5.x versions. Please let me know if there are any extra details that I can provide and help to fix this mouse pointer stability problem.
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Regards,
Marek