Multiple open VMs mouse hover

W

williamparry

Bit poster
Hi,

I'm on OS X 10.8 and I've noticed that when I switch between 2 fullscreen VM's (say, Windows 7 and OS X) then one of them won't register the hover event on UI elements. E.g. Say I'm working on OS X and swipe over to Windows 7, hovering over the toolbar at the bottom won't trigger a mouseover event (to show a tooltip, for example).

It's the lowest of the low bug, just wondering if anyone has come across it and if it's logged.
 
Hi, I can reproduce this consistently.

The bug can actually get a little annoying; even clicking inside the window doesn't restore hovering capability. Note that click events themselves work.

It seems as though from the point of view of the guest, the pointer doesn't exist until a click is made, at which point the guest registers the click event correctly, then the hypervisor immediately grabs the pointer back (just as if the user manually pressed CTRL+CMD, I see the pointer change colors and everything).

A workaround exists: click anywhere *outside* of the window, then click inside the window again -- the guest now keeps control of the pointer and hovering functionality is restored. Since I use both virtual machines in fullscreen, the workaround isn't really practical (need to leave fullscreen, click outside, click inside, reenter fullscreen), so I use a second screen and click there.

Disabling `SmartMouse' also makes the problem disappear, but this functionality is useful.

I may capture a small video, but the test case is very simple: open two virtual machines in fullscreen, each in its workspace, make sure SmartMouse is enabled, then switch from one to the other (for example using CTRL+(left|right) arrow).

From there, one can see that hovering events are not registered by the applications -- indeed, the guest OS doesn't seem to know where the pointer is. Clicking anywhere makes it apparent if the guest cursor is different than the host's (different color or shape): it will change to the guest's on click, and switch back to the host's on release.
 
I've seen this same problem. It only manifests when I have two VMs open. I normally keep a Windows 7 VM up all the time. If I start my Ubuntu VM as well, switching between them causes lots of mouse focus problems. I run them both fullscreen and the only way to "reset" the mouse after switching VMs is to bring up the Parallels menu bar and click on something (anything). After that, the focus comes back. Both of my VMs are configured with SmartMouse as "Auto".
 
For completeness: I did file a support ticket back then.
Hello,

This thread[1] seemed to have lost some attention; the bug is not critical (quite annoying though), but I thought I'd make sure it got registered somewhere in the TODO list.

More information: a guest doesn't seem to lose control of the pointer (with SmartMouse) when switching to another guest by using OS X `workspace switching' (or whatever it's called).

This means that (a) it actually doesn't seem to have anything to do with fullscreen, I can reproduce with windowed guests, and (b) switching *back* to the original guest without doing the workaround first is fine (since the guest never really lost control of the pointer).

Thanks.

1: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?274409-Multiple-open-VMs-mouse-hover
Click to expand...
They weren't able to reproduce the problem, but they were willing to setup a call and try with my help -- I wasn't available at the time. They also asked me to try 8.0.18480.859305, but the update wasn't available to me directly. I was supposed to get back to them after I had received it, but I kind of forgot about it; my bad (so yep, this is me trying to make it up for that).

I'm now using 8.0.18483.860857 and the problem still persists, but the ticket is closed. Feel free to open a new one, although I don't know how it can be explained any better than that without knowing more about the internals. I guess it's simply low-priority.
 
I've had this problem for a long while as well, but only now got annoyed enough to look for information on it. Having found this thread, I can confirm the problem.

With the hover event no longer being recognized by my Windows VMs, doing precision work, like resizing frames, columns, etc. becomes difficult because one no longer receives the visual feedback of the cursor icon changing to/from a pointer, hand, i-beam, resize arrow, etc. Also, activating windows cascading menus no longer works; you have to click on each submenu to activate it.

I can avoid the issue by not running my VMs in full-screen, but then I get a jittery transition as a move from one "Spaces" space to another. I'm on OSX 10.6.8, and usually dedicate each VM to it's own "space". My Parallels version is 8.0.18483
 
@Maria@Parallels Thanks for the interest.

Yes, I can reproduce it consistently on Desktop 10 for Mac Version 10.2.1 (29006). Interestingly though, only in one "direction".

I open two VMs in two windows, and focus VM 1. It captures the pointer correctly, I see hovering events (icons lighting up, etc) properly handled.

I then focus VM 2 by switching to its window via a keyboard shortcut. Everything still works as expected.

However, if I do the same in the other direction, i.e. switching from VM 2 to VM 1 via keyboard shortcut, then VM 1 doesn't capture the pointer and hovering events aren't registered.

In this case, VM 1 is a Windows guest and VM 2 is a CentOS 6.6 guest.

I should note when focusing windows by simply moving the pointer to them and clicking correctly transfers the ownership of the pointer (no issue there). It doesn't happen before the actual click (it would be nice if it did), but this is perfectly fine. So currently, it seems only switching via keyboard is problematic.

PS: I had some problems downloading the update; the connection would drop systematically after ~30-60s after which I was prompted to retry. Thankfully, the transfer would resume and continue for another 30-60 seconds before dropping again. Another user on our network reported the same issue; we haven't ruled out that the problem is on our side, but we don't observe any other perturbations. FYI the hosts were 141.101.114.30, 141.101.115.30, 190.93.244.30, 190.93.245.30 (all addresses assigned to CloudFlare, I assume you use their services). The other user experienced the issue days before, so it doesn't look like a transient error. Maybe you can take a look on your side. This was very likely linked to an issue with our local network, sorry for the noise.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top