Dear Community,
I am a person with a disability caused by a high spinal cord injury, which has resulted in a lack of function in my arms. Due to this, I use adaptive hardware and software to operate my PC. In my case, I use a head tracker that moves the mouse cursor based on my head movements. I also use software that assists with mouse clicking and an on-screen keyboard. While I encounter some challenges from time to time, I am usually able to adapt and find the right solutions.
Currently, I am facing an issue where the on-screen keyboard does not work within virtual machines powered by VMware Workstation. My host operating system is Windows 11, and although physical keyboard input works fine when a third party presses any key, the on-screen keyboard fails to function in any virtual machine. Previously, I used another virtualization platform, Oracle's VirtualBox, where everything worked well. However, I have had to switch to VMware Workstation for various reasons. I use VMWare Workstation Version 17.5.2
Here are the solutions I have tried to fix my problem:
- Enabled the Enhanced Keyboard Driver in VMware Workstation.
- Used different third-party on-screen keyboards.
- Ran VMware Workstation with elevated privileges.
- Changed compatibility settings to run VMware Workstation in an earlier Windows version.
- Confirmed that VMware Tools are installed.
- Tried different variations of the grab/ungrab options in the virtual machine's input settings and preferences.
- Adjusted keyboard settings on the host machine.
- Confirmed that mouse clicks inside the virtual machine work properly, even with adaptive software for mouse clicking.
- Verified that only the accessibility on-screen keyboard does not work.
- Noted that when using the on-screen keyboard provided by the guest operating system inside the virtual machine, it works. However, this solution does not work for me because not all operating systems I use have a graphical user interface; sometimes, I need to work using only the command line.
- Ensured that all USB devices are recognized by the guest OS inside the VM.
Could you please provide some suggestions to help resolve my issue? This is very important to me, as it allows me to continue doing the things I truly love.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.