Kensington Trackball/Vista 64/VMWare Invert Scroll Issue

[ljwilson]

My environment: Windows Vista 64 Ultimate/SP1, VMWare Workstation 6.5, Kensington Expert Mouse (trackball).

Since Kensington doesn't have a 64-bit mouse driver for Windows for their Expert Mouse, I found a post:

http://jeffhandley.com/archive/2007/12/ ... vista.aspx

suggesting to use the Intellipoint 64-bit Vista version from Microsoft, and XMouse Button Control (XMBC) to map the keys. Works great in Vista. However, I found that with the "Invert Mouse Wheel Scrolling" option of XMBC checked in Vista, when running XP guest virtual machines (vm's) under VMWare, the vm's would not recognize the mouse wheel at all. If I leave "Invert Mouse Wheel Scrolling" unchecked on the Vista side, then the vm's recognize the wheel fine.

My workaround to get the "Invert Mouse Wheel Scrolling" option working in the vm's is to setup the default settings in Vista the way I want them ("Invert Mouse Wheel Scrolling" checked), and then use the application specific settings for vmware.exe in XMBC on the Vista (host) side (with "Invert Mouse Wheel Scrolling" unchecked), and then install XMBC in each VM. Then in the VM I set XMBC to have the settings I want (which are the same as what I set the default settings to on the Vista host side).

What would really be nice would be for the "Invert Mouse Wheel Scrolling" to be recognized directly by the vm's without having to install XMBC in each. Not sure if that is doable or not, but I thought I'd pass on the suggestion, along with the workaround in case anyone else stumbles onto this particular combination and issue. If you don't have VMWare Workstation to test with--you could either get a free 30-day trial, or possibly the free vmware player with a downloadable virtual machine appliance could be used for testing as well. I would of course be glad to beta test anything for you.

Thanks again for a great program!

...jack

[phil]

Hi,

firstly I do have VMWare workstation 6.5.
Secondly, I don't think it is possible to fix, because I think VMWare accesses the mouse at a lower lever than xmouse - that's why anything configured in XMouse does not apply on a virtual machine - it has already swallowed/processed the mouse buttons.

I don't know where this interrupt sits - maybe there is a filter driver in there doing some processing if the VM is "active" or maybe there is a hook installed lower in the chain than the XMouse one (I've no idea how to check that). Anyway, I've not found any solution so far and I don't expect to. I'm just thankful that I can at least use all 5 buttons in my VM's now

Thanks,
Phil