VMWare Player mouse becomes erratic

Question

I have been experiencing a problem with VMWare Player 3.1.6

This is on a Panasonic Toughbook CF53 the Host OS is Windows XPSP3 fully updated, The Guest os is Windows XPSP3 fully updated.

It seems that randomly in the guest the mouse cursor becomes completely erratic and uncontrollable moving randomly around the screen. The mouse while uncontrollable in the guest works fine in the host. The only way to fix it is to reboot the guest machine numerous times as the problem may still be there after a reboot.

I have tried:

• reinstalling the vmware guest tools.
• updating the hosts's machines mouse driver.
• reinstalling the host's and guests mouse driver
• Changeing guests hardware accelation to one from top ( this disables mouse pointer accelaration)

None of the above works. I have been at this for days now. Anyone got any ideas on what to try next. I cannot upgrade to the next Major version of VMWare Player.

Solution

Disable Write Combines in the advanced Display properties in your XP VM.

Comments

[Zac B]

Does this problem occur only when using the laptop's trackpad? Does it occur using an external mouse connected to the laptop?

[Hugh Allen]

Have you tried reinstalling the guest OS (or creating a new VM)? My main use of a virtual machine is to run untrusted software, so malware infection seems a strong possibility.

[Nick]

When you were checking the mouse drivers on the guest, was the mouse listed as VMware pointing device? I've seen VMware Guest revert to PS/2 or HID mice, which means the mouse isn't using the drivers from VMware tools.

[swapyonubuntu]

are you using a graphic card?you can try installing other gfx drivers

[Mokubai]

Any chance of explaining what this does or why this might help?

[Magnus]

It worked for me, your "mileage" may be "weary" ;)