Workstation 17.5.0: (enhanced?) keyboard driver problem

[Korbinian]

Hi,

this is for anyone having the same trouble after upgrading to 17.5.0; I did the standard in place upgrade, and - as allways- installed the enhanced keyboard driver.

After that I started up my vm and did some work in IDEA. Shortly after I edited some code at once a whole line got erased instead of just 1 click on the remove key. You could literally see the line beeing draged leftwards and dissapear letter by letter.... At first I was ok... well.. wtf... after 2 mins the same again. I rebooted my laptop and restarted my work. Suddenly after 4 mins the whole system removes line by line and this time it even didnt let me use my own keyboard anymore... didnt stop... and tried to delete further even after the code file was already empy (thanks git... no worries here 😄 ). Also the whole system hung without beeing able to press any key - only way out was a complete hard reset of the hardware.

I tried to fix this for some time but only after I did a complete uninstall and reinstall with reboots and lefting out the "enhanced keyboard driver" the problem seems gone.

So, if you have any problems with your computer typing or deleting on its own: get rid of the "enhanced keyboard driver"!

For Vmware in case you're interested:

Betriebsystemname Microsoft Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045
Systemhersteller Dell Inc.
Systemmodell Precision 7760
Prozessor Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3187 MHz, 6 Kern(e), 12 logische(r) Prozessor(en)
BIOS-Version/-Datum Dell Inc. 1.23.0, 07.06.2023
Installierter physischer Speicher (RAM) 64,0 GB

[ddvmwarehk]

(special thanks for the elongated reply from @usafw-mheck)

keyboard.allowBothIRQs = "FALSE"

seems to do the trick.

Host OS: Windows 11 Enterprise

Guest OS: Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS

Issue encountered with	3D Enabled	3D Disabled
Wayland	yes	yes
Xorg	yes	yes

Which has kept me on 17.0 until reading this thread.

With changes: ubuntu-vm appears stable on 17.5.0 build-22583795 and latency improved greatly.

@banackm  

[Justin67]

This is probably a stupid question, but where does one add this config option? There's nothing in the GUI...

[Dryne]

I recently upgraded from the latest Workstation Professional v16 to the latest Workstation Professional v17.5 after a host hardware upgrade to the latest Intel Core 9 14900K CPU.  I have always installed the enhanced keyboard driver (even though I have no idea of what benefit it provides), but I will state I am facing no issues with a Windows 11 host running the latest available update from Microsoft.  All default features are enabled on my host, and my guest OS is also running the latest Windows 11 Professional with all default features enabled.  I have absolutely disabled nothing, and I am facing no performance issues or keyboard issues.  My host has significant memory (192GB), and I have my VMs configured to make use of this memory.

My previous workstation was another story.  That was a dual CPU Dell Precision Workstation.  This machine was very old and did face performance issues.  I could not update it to the latest Windows 10 updates let alone Windows 11.

[KitsuneMulder]

Open the configuration file within the folder of the VM.

[EndUser2024]

Upgraded to 17.5 today after dropping $199 as I have not been keeping up with things using a friends old version but recent news made me jump in to get a license of my own before things come a monthly sub heckscape ...  was not having this issue before but yeah am now and it is VERY frustrating indeed!

[Dryne]

199 is a lot of money.  I never paid that for Workstation that I remember.  I think that is the price for a full new install license.

I would always write to sales support for a discount, and they always honored it even when skipping versions.  This may change now that Broadcom took over.

[EndUser2024]

Correct I bought I non-upgrade license not cheap for sure but now I have a current key I been using this key which was a friend of mine had which was for 14 ...very old - I been using it more than long enough so I don't mind just buying my own key as I was starting to have more and more problems  using that old version ...finally figured today yeah ok pony up already but I not a fan of revolving subscriptions model but that seems to be the model all things are gravitating to...  so hopefully I have more trouble-free years ahead as certainly compared to virtualBox there no beating this one...   

anywho back to the subject ... 

... seems the chatter about the above piece 'worked' I have not had any more freezing on the keyboard front via adding the two config file entries... 

[Guido3]

Guess who fixed a bug in a hanging keyboard? It only took 4 months to get it fixed!

VMWare 17.5.1 release notes:

Resolved Issues

• Keyboard hangs on Linux guest virtual machines

  Linux guest virtual machines might have their keyboard processing hang after specific combinations of keyboard/mouse events.

  This issue is resolved.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/17.5.1/rn/vmware-workstation-1751-pro-release-note...

I made a backup of my VM and upgraded to 17.5.1. I skipped the encryption and HW compatibility upgrades for now and will make sure that everything keeps working before I'll upgrade those :). Hopefully this case is now closed!

[tomastokamrazek]

Paid product by the way. Unreal. At least they fixed it, that's something.

[dalepsmith]

So does this mean we can remove the

keyboard.allowBothIRQs = "FALSE"

workaround?

[d16rogers]

I don't think I tried the allowBothIRQs trick. I was too frustrated to try re-installing 17.5.0 since I had already backed out of it.

But... the issue I was having is indeed gone in 17.5.1. New company and new machine (same model), so I can't be sure it will be fixed for you.

[Technogeezer]

---

@Guido3 wrote:

Guess who fixed a bug in a hanging keyboard? It only took 4 months to get it fixed!

---

My bet is that we'd still be waiting for this bug fix had there not been a high priority security issue that needed to be released. 

VMware is not very good about pushing out releases on a timely basis that simply fix bugs. 

[KitsuneMulder]

What’s weird is I am positive this issue existed before October of last year but 17.5 released in October. 

[Technogeezer]

Depending how late in the development cycle of 17.5 the bug was reported, it’s not surprising that the bug wasn’t fixed at release of 17.5. This may not be considered a showstopper for release because the work around is pretty straightforward.

It is disappointing that a tech note wasn’t published with the workaround immediately (it’s not easy to find things in these discussion forums). It’s also a shame that it’s taken 4 months to see a fix. (And I firmly believe that if they didn’t need to get a fix out for a security issue we’d still be waiting). 

[DhairyaT]

@Korbinian Please upgrade to the latest Workstation version 17.5.1 as this issue has been fixed in this release.

[Blazinfatherted]

Yep all fixed ................at last 😀 with 17.5.1 but with new CVE's can't wait for 17.5.2

[Landerson]

Running 17.5.1 on:

System Model: Precision 5560
System Type: x64-based PC
Intel64 Family 6 Model 141 Stepping 1 Genuine Intel ~2496 Mhz
BIOS Version: Dell Inc. 1.27.0, 2/1/2024
Total Physical Memory: 65,256 MB

Hosting Win11, .vmx file has following:

keyboard.allowBothIRQs = "FALSE"
keyboard.vusb.enable = "TRUE"

VMs will just freeze, only option is to restart. 

17.5.1 hasn't resolved this issue.