ESX console can cause mouse to lock up inside VirtualBox

[myxiplx]

I've never seen this on a physical PC, but when using VirtualBox I'm regularly finding that I can't release the mouse from the VMware console.

It only ever happens after I release the mouse from VirtualBox. If I had the VMware Console as the active application within VirtualBox, often the mouse doesn't work properly when I return to Virtualbox.

What happens is that I can see the mouse moving around the screen, but it's not possible to click on anything. Mouseover controls work fine, I just can't click on anything. I also find that I can't press Ctrl+Alt to release the keyboard / mouse from the VMware console.

When this happens the only way I've found to get out of it is to press Host+Del, and then use the keyboard to bring up task manager, and end task the VMware console. I suspect this is a clash between the way the VMware Console grabs & releases the mouse, and the way VirtualBox re-activates the mouse as you come back to work on the guest.

I'm running VirtualBox on Ubuntu 8.10. My guest is Windows XP Pro SP3, and I'm running VMware Infrastructure Client v2.5.0.

Now I know that the VMware Console will release the mouse automatically as you move it outside of the client, so I'm wondering if this issue is being caused because as you release the mouse from VirtualBox, and then return, the mouse cursor effectively jumps from one position to another. Would it be possible to return to VirtualBox with the cursor in the same place you left it, and then have the cursor move to the new position?

[myxiplx]

Just adding some more comments, I've just had a VMware VirtualCenter unrecoverable error within virtualbox. I'm testing now on a regular machine, just in case this is a SP3 error.

[myxiplx]

Ok, I can get a similar problem when running on a physical machine, but accessing it via RDP. I don't get the mouse completely locked when that happens, but I do need to use Ctrl-Alt-End to get to task manager and kill the VMware task.

It looks like a conflict between the VMware console attempting to grab the keyboard & mouse, and the way the remote keyboard & mouse are actually managed. Either way, it doesn't appear to play well with either RDP or VirtualBox.

[yardbirdsax]

I'm still seeing this using ESX VSphere client 4 and VBox 3.1.2. Anyone working on this?

[Technologov]

My recommendation is to disable "Mouse Integration" in VBox VM for such special applications.

There is no easy fix for this bug, because some applications just require relative mouse pointer.

I have opened a related bug #2762.

-Technologov

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.