Monthly Archives: November 2011

Woot. In what was certainly the best email I received today, against all odds, GameFly shipped Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This is twice now that I’ve gotten a just-released game from GameFly. Timing your returns to get new releases is hit or miss, and I’ve gone through spells where I’ve gotten one game after another from the bottom of my queue, but sometimes they come through.

No more buyer’s remorse

The last game I bought was Final Fantasy XIII, which turned out to be a major disappointment. Since then, I’ve wised up and started renting, although from all accounts, Skyrim seems like one worth buying. Still, dollar-per-hour, renting is a far better deal than buying used, and I’ve been able to try out a ton of games I was curious about (most of which I returned within a week or two) that I wouldn’t have otherwise even played.

GameFly referrals really do work

By the way, the GameFly referral program is really ugly, but it seriously works. I’ve been coasting on referrals for the last four months, and as it stands now, I won’t be billed again until January. I’d recommend checking it out if you have the means of putting your referral code online. If you’re not already a GameFly member, if you use this referral link to sign up with GameFly, we both get a free month: http://gamefly.tellapal.com/a/clk/cxlkm. Even if you’re normally on the One Game Out plan, if someone uses your referral, your reward is a free month at the Two Games Out plan (so you get an extra game, too).

As of November 11th, the rewards have changed, though. They no longer can offer cash via Paypal as a reward (which I am fine with). Here’s their communication on the matter:

GameFly Refer-A-Friend: Important Information Regarding Rewards

Thanks for telling your friends about GameFly!

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to offer PayPal as a reward option for our referral program. You’ll still be able to earn a free month of GameFly for every friend you refer (or you can donate it to the Make-A-Wish Foundation).

On December 1st, all users who have selected PayPal will be automatically switched over to the ‘free month of GameFly’ option. Any valid rewards generated in November will be paid out as usual.

We apologize for this change and hope you’ll continue to send your friends our way.

Click Here to access your account, share more and earn more!

Thank you,

The GameFly Referral Program
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I have a Windows XP guest running in VMWare Workstation 7 on a Windows 7 Ultimate host machine. This is working pretty well. The XP guest is nice and responsive. I have only one gripe. I’d like all of the buttons on my Logitech MX510 (the best mouse ever) to be mappable in the guest.

Starting from square one, I decided to try installing the current version of SetPoint in the guest OS. The installation went fine, but the usual functionality of the SetPoint settings utility was absent.

SetPoint Settings in an XP virtual machine

SetPoint Settings in an XP virtual machine

As shown in the screenshot, the SetPoint Settings utility displays only the Tools tab. It is missing the My Mouse tab (and if a keyboard were installed, I presume it would be missing the Keyboard tab, too).

After some Googling around, it appears to be a due to the way VMware approximates the physical mouse. VMware seems to treat USB mice connected to the host as PS/2 devices in the guest. SetPoint, then, doesn’t detect any Logitech hardware that it can configure.

The question of how to obtain SetPoint functionality in virtual machines is one that has been asked many, many times before, without a satisfactory answer. More on that in a little bit.

The best work around

Thankfully, it seems that, at least in the case of a Windows host and a Windows guest, installing SetPoint inside the virtual machine is not necessary. Installing it on the host seems to make all of the functionality available in the guest. This is the solution that I’m implementing now, and it is what I would recommend, provided you have rights to install software on the host.

Paths to follow if you want to pursue installing SetPoint inside a VMware virtual machine

I applaud your courage. There are a few settings that can be tweaked that may get you closer to a working installation.

Possible setting number one

From the post at http://coreygilmore.com/blog/2008/04/30/better-multi-button-mouse-support-with-vmware-fusion-and-workstation/

Add the following line to the virtual machine’s .vmx file:

mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"

From what I can tell, this setting allows me to use the Forward and Back buttons on the mouse, but does not make the mouse detectable by SetPoint. The remaining mouse buttons do nothing.

Possible setting number two

From the post at http://superuser.com/questions/35830/back-forward-mouse-buttons-do-not-work-in-vmware-workstation-6-5-guest-os/304583#304583

The solution given (which did not work for me) is to:

First add the following line to the virtual machine’s .vmx file:

usb.generic.allowHID = "TRUE"

An explanation of what this does, by a VMware associate, can be found in the thread at http://communities.vmware.com/thread/110919?start=15&tstart=0

If you’re feeling really adventurous and/or desperate, you can take out the mouse.vusb.enable line and add this option instead:

usb.generic.allowHID = “TRUE”

Then, you’ll notice that your main mouse and keyboard (if they are USB) are available to pass through into the guest via the USB devices menu.

The dangerous part here is that once you pass through the mouse, it is actually disconnected from the host, so you won’t be able to ungrab from the guest just by mousing out of the Fusion window. You can still ungrab with the keyboard (ctrl-cmd I believe is the shortcut?). If you actually pass through your keyboard and your mouse, you’ll be stuck in the guest and you’ll have to shut it down (or worse, reboot your physical machine).

This sounded like a great idea, and I was willing to set up a second, PS/2 mouse to control just the host, if necessary. Without connecting a second mouse, I tried passing the Logitech mouse as a USB device to the VM, just as I would an external hard drive, but VMware prevented this, with a warning message:

[Machine Name] – VMware Workstation
Cannot connect “Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse” to this virtual machine. The host requires this device for input.
[OK]

The second step would have been to go into Device Manager, click Actions, and then choose “Scan for hardware changes”.

I didn’t get to the second step, as I was too lazy to track down a PS/2 mouse to keep attached to the host, and I still wanted to find a software solution. I suspect, though, that this would be were to begin, were I to need to get SetPoint running in the guest OS.

Summary

While I wasn’t able to figure out how to install SetPoint on a guest OS, the workaround of installing SetPoint on the host OS seems to accomplish my goal.