[SOLVED] Windows 7 mouse cursor alignment in VNC console when SPICE is enabled

oxiwan

Member
Feb 15, 2011
5
0
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With Windows 7 VM, I have a problem with mouse cursor alignment in VNC console.
To solve this problem, I must necessarily activate the tablet option. This works fine if SPICE is not enabled.
But when I enable SPICE, the tablet device (mouse HID) seems disabled and the cursor alignment fails.

Thanks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sorry,
vdagent is for SPICE session. It has no effect in VNC console

The mouse cursor is OK with SPICE but not with VNC console.
For me, tablet device is needed for a good working.

Best regards.
 
from vmware. follow the link I sent (also the linked forum posts).
 
Unable to install the VMware drivers for a Windows 10 VM, its 2021 and is this relevant even today ? as the issue continues to persist.

both VNC and spice consoles continue to not be in sync even after 8 years.

installing the full VMware driver sounds crazy, any way we can just get the vmmouse driver out ?

Solution: disable "use tablet for pointer" and install vmmouse driver inside your windows VM

so you have a working mouse in VNC and SPICE. just tested successfully on a win7-32 with spice.

see also http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Performance_Tweaks#USB_Tablet_Device
 
I know this is an old thread, but since nobody had a solution I thought I would post for anyone who stumbles upon this thread later on.

Given that Device Manager has no exclamation marks anywhere and every driver seems to be installed, I tried disabling "Use tablet for pointer" under "Options" for VM, shut it down, then started the VM again (still mouse was out of sync). Then I went back to options for the VM in PVE and enabled "Use tablet for pointer" without rebooting the VM and it finally started working. Device Manager now shows a new device under "Human Interface Devices" -> USB Input Device" which wasn't there (I compared devices with another working VM).

Proxmox 7.1
Windows Server 2022

EDIT: This also works as mentioned above. This is the driver extracted from vmware-tools package provided from vmware. It appears this driver is universal. You force install it for the PS2 mouse in the device manager and the cursor is in sync again. I did not notice any change in power consumption though. I do not recommend this method though, and please do run the files through virustotal or something (in case someone breaks through my mediafire account in the future - there is no MF auth available)
https://www.mediafire.com/file/xpnucp8gwghw54y/vmmouse.zip/file
(please let me know if this violates a policy or something and I'll remove the link)
 
Last edited:
Please do not post to a really outdated thread.
Problem still exist and is very old. Installing windows guest does not solve anything.

I know this is an old thread, but since nobody had a solution I thought I would post for anyone who stumbles upon this thread later on.
[...]

Proxmox 7.1
Windows Server 2022

After all these years You find a way to solve this.
Thank you.

Btw. it works on W10.
 
I think a found a solution for this and it works consistently in my environment. It also explains why it doesn't work for a lot of people.

Brand new windows VM, with default video.I connect to the console via usual proxmox novnc way and... I can't change the resolution.
I switch the video to SPICE and power off/on the machine. Now the resolution can be changed but mouse is not synced.
Under options, Use tablet for pointer is set to yes. Disable it! Then re-enable it. Mouse is synced and survives reboots, etc.

I suspect this is a bug. Here's what's going on and why it seemed to work for some and not others.

When you create a new Win VM with default display and start it, it by default starts with tablet support (for mouse sync). This is reflected in the options screen. Use tablet is listed as yes. If you inspect the kvm process that proxmox started and the parameters it pased this is confirmed:
/usr/bin/kvm -id .... -device usb-tablet,id=tablet,bus=ehci.0,port=1

If you look at the config file for the VM under /etc/pve/qemu-server/<id>.conf you see no mention of tablet: 1 in that config file. It's omitted but proxmox is launching the VM with it because it is the default option.

NOW! Change the display from Default to SPICE and start the VM. Proxmox DOES NOT start it with the -device usb-tablet,id=tablet,bus=ehci.0,port=1 option!!! Even though it claims that it's on under Options!

When you turn the tablet support off in options, proxmox modifies the config file for the VM and inserts this:
tablet: 0
Then you re-enable tablet support but proxmox does not delete this line, it changes it to:
tablet: 1
And when proxmox sees tablet: 1 in the config, it starts the VM with the tablet support even if the display is set to spice.

Instead of toggling the tablet support of and on in Options you can simply add:
tablet: 1
to the config and start the VM. Problem solved! I did not need any additional drivers for this to work! I usually install the virtio-win-guest-tools.exe from the virtio ISO but even that is not necessary to get SPICE video with mouse sync to work. My trouble was all because Proxmox says tablet support is enabled but then it doesn't actually enable it on VMs with SPICE video if it's not explicitly defined as tablet: 1 in the config.

Hope this helps someone!
 
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When you turn the tablet support off in options, proxmox modifies the config file for the VM and inserts this:
tablet: 0
Then you re-enable tablet support but proxmox does not delete this line, it changes it to:
tablet: 1
And when proxmox sees tablet: 1 in the config, it starts the VM with the tablet support even if the display is set to spice.

I've been able to reproduce a specific behavior consistently and reliably, leading me to believe it's a bug. It seems like it could be even be fixed with a reasonable amount of effort. While this might appear to be a minor issue, it can be incredibly frustrating in practice. Considering SPICE is such an optimal solution for many of us, it would be unfortunate for this to tarnish the user experience.

I'm not sure if this issue has already been acknowledged by the the developers. Regardless, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to write your findings down.

I've always managed to fix the problem eventually, but I never knew which of my desperate and unnecessary trial and error steps was responsible - now it makes sense. It could have been so simple, yet I kept trying different drivers, uninstalling them, and probably at some point, I toggled the option on and off in the correct sequence, and that was the sole solution. Wow. This might indeed benefit from a fix ;-).
 

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