How To Fix Windows 2008 Mouse Lag in VMware Virtual Center

Recently I installed a couple of Windows 2008 R2 servers. After the installation, I suffered from the classic symptoms of Vmware tools not being installed. I had checked and all of the drivers installed, so I decided to check the Vmware KB and found this KB article #1011709. The article explained that poor mouse tracking performance was due to Windows 7 or Windows 2008 server installing the wrong video driver.

By default Windows 2008 or Windows 7 installs the XPDM driver which is the Windows XP/2003 Driver Model when the Vmware tools are installed. The Vmware tools drivers install into the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers” folder. So the fix is to update the drivers to the WDDM or Windows Display Driver Model.

How to fix it:

Update to ESX 4.0 Update 1
Open “Device Manager” -> “Display Adapter
Right click on “Standard VGA Graphics Adapter” and select “Update Driver Software”
Click on “Browse my computer for driver software” and find the directory of “C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\wddm_video”
Once it is installed you will need to reboot

How to fix it without ESC 4.0 Update 1:

When installing the Vmware tools deselect the drivers included with ESX 4.0. During the install select custom or modify in the installer and then deselect the SVGA (XPDM) driver.

Note: Make sure the virtual machine hardware is version 7. If you end up with a black screen, raise the video to 32MB in virtual center.

How to video:

9 thoughts on “How To Fix Windows 2008 Mouse Lag in VMware Virtual Center”

Moe February 5, 2011 at 11:59 am

Good to known !

It’s also work on ESX 4.1

jennifer May 25, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Thank you so much ! What a difference.

TCP July 1, 2011 at 1:21 pm

Thanks for the fix. Just what I needed for ESXi 4.1 Update 1

B3R7 October 25, 2011 at 7:24 am

i got the same cursorlaggs in windows xp sp3 since i installed a new original win xp sp3 copy.
but its not from the start, it begins to lagg after a couple of minutes and it can be totaly fixed by rebooting.
any idea about this one?

Bohack Post authorOctober 25, 2011 at 7:27 am

It all boils down to the latest drivers and forcing the correct drivers. A suggestion is to turn off video acceleration in the display advanced properties. This will force the video drivers to not offload video acceleration to the emulated video card. I know that it’s fixed problems in the past… Keep me updated.

Ben Berry November 30, 2011 at 4:36 pm

Thanks, man. Ran in to this problem today and this fixed it!

John January 3, 2012 at 5:48 am

Thanks, resolve an issue on about 50 of my servers.

Grzegorz January 27, 2012 at 6:09 am

It works for esx 4.1. Thank you.

Chuck Renaud February 8, 2012 at 1:24 pm

Works with ESXi 5.0–thanks!

Comments are closed.