Tag: Tips

Quick Note: Mouse Jumps Around in VMware Workstation

I just upgraded a testing machine to Windows 10 1909. And installed VMware Workstation 15 latest version on the testing machine. Somehow the mouse jumps around in VMware Workstation when the mouse pointer is grabbed by a VM. This is very annoying. I only observed this issue when run VMware Workstation in remote desktop session. I didn’t see the same issue when I run a VM on a local computer.

The reason is the testing machine has WDDM graphic driver installed. You can disable WDDM graphic driver in remote desktop session by modifying group policy.

  1. Open group policy editor by following command:
gpedit.msc
  1. Go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> All Settings
  2. Disable the setting: Use WDDM graphics display driver for Remote Desktop Connections.
Disable WDDM graphics display driver.
  1. Reconnect the remote desktop session.

Please refer to following VMware KB to understand more about WDDM.

WDDM and XPDM graphics driver support with ESX, ESXi, Workstation and Fusion (1016770)

It’s not clear why the WDDM driver caused the problem. I think the reason probably because WDDM gives benefit to use software and hardware acceleration both. Maybe my testing VM’s physical host doesn’t have hardware acceleration capability. But the mouse jumps around in VMware Workstation due to the driver switching between the acceleration capabilities.

I also posted few articles regarding mouse issue in virtualization environment for your reference.

Mouse Cursor Disappeared in Remote Desktop in mRemoteNG

VMware Remote Console Freeze or Black Screen

OneDrive Can’t Add Your Folder Right Now!

This post is nothing related to servers. I post that since I couldn’t find anything on the internet about this issue. This “OneDrive Can’t Add Your Folder” spent me quite a while to figure it out. I only found an article talks about IRM after I figured the issue out. So I think it’s maybe valuable to document that. I re-installed the testing machine by different OS versions several times. It’s just happened suddenly. My OneDrive cannot sync any files. I upgraded the client to the latest version but no luck.

The error message I got initially was:

We can’t sync your OneDrive – xxx

Following these steps to fix the problem:

1. Go to portal.microsoft.com/OneDrive, click the Settings icon in the top-right, then click “Site settings”.

2. Under “Site Administration”, click “Site libraries and lists”.

3. Click “Customise Documents”.

4. Click “Information Rights Management” and clear the checkbox.

Then I upgraded OneDrive client, re-installed office, re-installed OS, and enabled full permission to my O365 account on OneDrive folders. I also tracked my OneDrive posting data by a nice free tool Fiddler. There are error keywords related to “IRM” that don’t support in Fiddler when I connected OneDrive to my O365 account. Then I uninstalled OneDrive and installed latest version of it. Now I got following error message when sign in my O365 account in OneDrive.

Sorry, OneDrive can’t add your folder right now

Please contact support.

I eventually figured it out when I was troubleshooting other software issues. The reason is the “Information Rights Management” (IRM) feature was enabled on my O365 account. It restricts file synchronization on unauthorized computers when I log in to a computer with my domain account (it’s also the O365 account). I checked my computer domain account in “Active Directory Users and Computers“. I noticed that the “Managed By” of the computer was blank. The OneDrive issue resolved as soon as I set it to my domain account.
Here is a good article to explain what’s IRM and how it affects OneDrive.