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VMware and Screen Savers
Workstation can interact poorly with screen savers on host operating systems.
When host screen savers activate while a virtual machine is running, several
problems can occur:
- The
screen may appear to go completely or partially blank
- The
system may not appear to respond to keystrokes
- The
system may appear to be hung with a blank screen
- VMware
BIOS spins while in BIOS Setup or when displaying no operating system found,
consuming CPU resources
Some reasons why these issues may occur include:
- The
virtual machine has a high scheduler priority and the guest operating system is
busy.
- You
are running a guest operating system (such as Windows 3.1 or Novell server) that
has an idle-loop that does not behave well ( the virtual machine will compete
with the screen saver running at a lower priority).
- Workstation
automatically releases the keyboard focus once it detects a screen saver
starting). This situation can occur often on users systems since a virtual
machine that has input focus has a high scheduling priority.
- You
have the input focus in a virtual machine and leave the host machine for some
period of time.
Typing some keystrokes should deactivate the screen saver, although if it
cannot get priority to run, the machine may take several minutes to appear to
respond. Typing CTRL-ALT-DEL and waiting for the security panel to appear may
speed this process.
Ultimately, VMware recommends that if you are having this problem you should
disable the screen saver.
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