Windows jumping away from mouse, odd windows behaviour

[neilt17]

I am running vmware fusion 8.5.6 on macOS Sierra 10.12.4 with Windows 10.

Quite regularly - but not all the time - I have a problem clicking one or more of the windows (not all of them though) in the virtual machine: for example if I try to close a window, the window jumps to the right - e,g. about a quarter of the way across the screen; I try to resize it, but instead the focus goes onto another window, within a windows explorer window I may be clicking through to browse folders, but a message may come up implying that the thing that windows had interpreted I'd clicked was different from what I had actually clicked (e.g. a message saying that I didn't have permission to move a folder - but I wasn't trying to do that in the first place). I can usually close the offending window from the task bar - and open a new window which normally behaves itself.

[bluefirestorm]

The way you described it seems like there is disagreement as to where the mouse pointer should between the macOS and the Windows 10 VM. An analogy I would make is that macOS is setting the mouse pointer in inches while the Windows 10 VM is moving in centimetres.

Anyway, I suspect it has to do with the Windows 10 VM display scaling.

Do you have display scaling also on the macOS host?

What is the Display Setting for the Windows 10 VM?

If you want to keep display scaling on either macOS host or Windows 10 guest or both; one possible thing to try is to keep the aspect ratio the same.

For example, MacBook Pro have 16:10 aspect ratio, so try to set the Windows 10 VM also to a resolution that is also 16:10 (e.g. 1680 x 1050).

[neilt17]

thank you bluefirestorm. On the mac host, the display resolution is set as "default for display", however if I select "scaled", the scale it gives me is 1920 x 1200. On windows in advanced display settings it has 1920 x 1178 - if I try and apply a 1920 x 1200 setting, it doesn't apply it - it resets it back to 1920 x 1178 immediately. (There isn't a 1920 x 1178 option for the mac host).

The problem only happens occasionally - and only seems to be for Windows Explorer windows by the way.

[bluefirestorm]

I doubt if it has anything to do with the Fusion mouse settings.

There are other cases here in the VMware community that doesn't involve Fusion software where people experience their "mouse madness" in Microsoft Remote Desktop and/or vSphere Client to manage VMware ESXi and VMs. Setting their Windows scaling back to 100% resolves a lot of these strange mouse movement/clicking problems for them.

Unusual mouse behaviour is just one symptom of Windows display scaling problems; such as mouse pointer that doesn't want to go where you want it to go or unable to click on an actual icon but having to click somewhere outside it. Imagine the havoc it would cause for someone with trading software as usually the "Buy" and "Sell" buttons are right next to each other. Other visible symptoms are when some icons, application text fonts, dialog windows are either too big or too small and/or out of proportion with the rest.

Since your macOS display have a maximum 1920x1200 (just like a 2010 17" MacBook Pro that I have), there is no difference in Default and the maximum resolution available for Scaled.

There are multiple layers of display settings in a macOS Fusion with Windows 10 VM scenario along with the settings in italics for you to try

macOS layer - Displays in System Preferences 1920x1200

Fusion Preferences - Display

    Single Window - Resize the virtual machine and the window

    Full Screen - Resize the virtual machine to fit the screen

Fusion VM Displays Settings

    Automatically adjust user interface size in the virtual machine - not checked

    Virtual Machine Resolution - Use Fusion Display Preferences for both options  

Windows VM OS

    Change the size of text, apps, and other items - 100%

    Advanced Display Settings - perhaps at 1680x1050

It is a different story with the higher resolution MacBook Pro that have 2560x1600 and 2880x1800. If you set to 100% for the Windows VM and macOS scaling set at 1:1, you will likely need a magnifying glass to look at the Windows VM :smileyhappy:

[wila]

Hi Neilt17,

Welcome at the VMware communities forums.

One thing you can try is to change the default for the mouse motion and set it to never optimize for gaming.

In the menu -> Fusion -> General -> Gaming: Never optimize mouse for games

--

Wil

[neilt17]

wila - thank you, I've changed the setting to "never optimise mouse for games" - I'll see if that stops the problem from re-occurring.