Slow mouse performance on Windows 2008 R2 virtual machine

By Arne Fokkema - ICT-Freak.nl

I wanted to migrate the lab to Windows Server 2008 R2 and found some problems with the video drivers provided with vSphere 4.0. After a quick search at http://kb.vmware.com I found the following KB article: KB1011709. This article mentioned the new WDDM driver:

Troubleshooting SVGA drivers installed with VMware Tools on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 running on ESX 4.0

Details

•  You receive a black screen on the virtual machine when using Windows 7 or
    Windows 2008 R2 as a guest operating system on ESX 4.0.
•  You experience slow mouse performance on Windows 2008 R2 virtual machine.

Solution

This issue can occur due to the XPDM (SVGA) driver provided with VMware Tools. This is a legacy Windows driver and is not supported on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 guest operating systems.

To resolve this issue, update to ESX 4.0 Update 1. A new WDDM driver is installed with the updated VMware Tools and is compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.

Note: After a VMware Tools upgrade, the driver files are located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video.

So I installed the wddm_video driver from:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video

Or the VMware SVGA 3d (Microsoft Corporation – WDDM) if you like:

But after a reboot the mouse performance was still very slow. So I wanted to change the Hardware acceleration level but this option was greyed out.

So I decided to give the other video drivers a try. You can find these drivers in:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\video

I rolled back the SVGA 3D Graphics Adapter then installed the SVGA II adapter”

after installing the SVGA II Drivers:

I was able to change the Hardware acceleration level to Full:

The mouse performance went back to normal speeds and I was able to control the VM again.

Conclusion:

• VMware ESX 4.0 update 1 + wddm_video driver = slow mouse performance
• VMware ESX 4.0 update 2 with latest patches + wddm_video driver = slow mouse performance
• VMware ESX 4.0 update 2 with latest patches + VMware video driver = good mouse performance
• VMware ESX 4.1 with latest patches + wddm_video = good mouse performance

I also tried to change the video memory to 32 MB and installed the wddm driver after that but it doesn’t solve the slow mouse performance.