P4: Ctrl and Alt keys get stuck

U

ultimante

Member
I made the mistake of upgrading to Parallels 4 a few days before a presentation I was giving on my MacBook Pro and my presentation suffered greatly for it.

Besides the extremely slow performance of P4 compared to P3, the biggest bug was that the CTRL and ALT keys would get "stuck" when I switched between Parallels and OS X using Leopard's Spaces. Whenever I returned to Windows, if I tried to type anything, it would apply CTRL+ALT to it. So, if I pressed L, it would attempt to log out of Windows. Other keystrokes would cause system menu bars to open.

The only cure is to restart Parallels.

I'm going to upgrade to the new build, but this has more to do with the new keyboard shortcut methodology in Parallels 4 than anything else. It was not broken before, I don't know why you "fixed" it. In fact, you broke it. Change it back, the new way provides zero benefit and nothing but headaches.
 
I'd like to add my annoyance at this issue which is occurring in both full-screen and coherence mode.

I was desperately trying to use a site in Windows Internet Explorer earlier (one that will only run in this browser as it's an integrated system application). Everytime I tried to log-in by clicking in a field and pressing 'm' (the first letter of my username), the browser would minimise.

This is one of those issues as Ultimante points out above that causes so much frustration as it effectively renders the guest OS unusable and I don't see why I should have to pay extra for that headache!

Danny
 
For me, it is only the command key which is stuck. But it is only stuck at logon. My password has a "d" in it, and when I start my virtual machine I cannot type any characters except "d", which checks the "use dial up networking" checkbox.

However, I found a workaround. As soon as the virtual machine starts and I get the Windows (XP in my case) login screen, I hit control alt delete, then tap the command key, and they type my password and away I go. From then on, nothing is stuck.
 
Gosh! I thought I was going mad! I would type an email and then suddenly pressing the 'h' and 'e' keys did weird and funkay things. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I even cleaned and hit my bluetooth keyboard as I though it was a misconnection then I figure I'd use my MacBook keyboard and it gave me the same problem!!!!!!

I'm using 4.0.3540 in Full Screen mode on a second display. Gosh, 3.0 worked a lot better than this.
 
I seem to have had a similar problem after the update to 4.0.3540, but it seems it was not my keyboard but my mouse. It got into drag mode when I clicked, i.e. only the "Mouse Down" event was registered, not the "Mouse Up". This happened only once in each of my two VMs after the update. Windows XP "Accessibility" shortcut keys (which I would normally blame for such stickieness) are all turned off in my VMs.
 
Hello,

Please, check that you have no "wrong" key-combinations set in Parallels Desktop tab (in the top Menu) -> Preferences -> Keyboard and mouse.
You can change them there according to your convenience.
 
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