Workstation 9 and dual monitors

[ArnorBld]

Hi,

I have been using VMWare Workstation 6.5 since 2008 and absolutely loved it.  I recently upgraded to Workstation 9.x and I have some issues with it.

I run it on dual monitor setup with two 27" Samsung monitors on a i7-3770 with asus motherboard and 32gb of ram, running windows 7 ultimate 64bit host.  In 6.5 this worked fine.  In 9.x I'm finding that every time I run a program in a guest maching using Win7-32 that requires elevation, one of the monitors is "disconnected" and shows the host.  The computer beeps like the monitor was disconnected.  Pressing the "Dual monitor" icon in the VMWare toolbar once doesn't do anything and pressing it again resets it to dual monitor again.  This only happens (as far as I can tell) if I run a program that requires admin elevation on the guest, for example task manager (Ctrl-Del-Insert)

Another thing I see quite often is that when I switch tabs from one vm to another, the vm screen is black and I have to click on it to display it.  None of the virtual machines have screensavers or powersettings turned on.

Those anomalies seem to be worse if the guest is set up to use more than 1 core pr. processor.  Version 6.5 ran perfectly on this machine and did not show either of those problems.

I have also seen the machines start up on a single monitor with a dual monitor desktop, i.e. it will start up with 3840x1024 desktop on 1920x1080 monitor.

I have tried all sorts of tweaks to the display settings both in Workstation as well as in the guest os. I _am_ running this on an onboard video chip off the motherboard, but another machine I also use which has an i5-2500K with 16GB ram, but otherwise same configuration and a Radeon video card shows the same problem with 9.x where 6.5 had no problem.

While this is not a big deal it is distracting.

If anyone has ideas for me to try out or tips on how to fix this, I would be very grateful:)

Best regards,

Arnor Baldvinsson

Icetips Alta LLC.

[mdunn-vmware]

Have you updated Tools in the VM?  Newer versions of Tools include newer video drivers too, so that may solve the problem. I tested a Win 7 VM using tools from WS 8 and 9, but I couldn't reproduce the problem you described.

[ArnorBld]

Hi,

Yes, the VMWare tools are updated and set to automatically update.   The monitors use HDMI but I had to use a VGA->HDMI converter since the motherboard only had one HDMI outlet and one VGA.  The monitor that "blanks" out is the secondary monitor and the one hooked up directly to the HDMI outlet.  I'm sure this is some sort of driver/hardware/whatever combination that I have stumbled on.  When the VM "disconnects" the secondary monitor, what happens (I forgot about it) is that the host monitor is NOT responsive.  This is a bit complicated to explain.

Lets say that on the host I have IE running on the seconday monitor.  I run the VM and start a program that runs elevated or start task manager.  The secondary monitor now shows the host desktop and the IE window.  However, the IE window does not respond, it's like the VM screen is still extended over it and the mouseclicks are not let through.  Indeed when this happens I have to click _twice_ on the "Cycle multiple monitors" button, the first one does nothing apparent, except it removes the invisible desktop on the secondary monitor and the IE window can now be accessed.  The second click extends the desktop over both monitors.

It's almost like the elevation makes the VM forget that it has 2 monitors, yet the second monitor is still "covered" with an invisible desktop.  Very, very weird.

If you guys want me to run any tests or test anything for you I'd be more than happy to do so:)

Best regards,

[Melgaard]

Just wanted to add that I am experiencing somewhat the same behavior for a Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit guest/host (both same OS) machine/vm.

Minimizing the VM seems to cause it to lose the secondary monitor as well as locking the host for me. Also going to another VM WS tab can do the trick.
It happens all the time so it is difficult to say what exactly can cause this.

As for launching applications that require elevated priviledges, I don't experience that they cause it to lose the second monitor as seems to be what is described here. Instead it seems to happen randomly sometimes, when I am in the middle of something the one monitor suddenly disconnects, this is very rare though where as the 2 above scenarios are much more frequent...

Locking host causes this like 80-90% of the times.
Minimizing causes this like 50% of the times.

Navigating to a different VM tab does it 20% of the times.

(These are rough estimates of frequency)...