thinkpad middle click in a VMWare doesn't work (guest: Ubuntu and host: windows 7)

Question

problem:

when i try to paste with middle click, the middle mouse button is ignored. in other cases middle click is also ignored.

my set up:

VMWare workstation 7.1.3

Host: windows 7 64-bit

Guest: existing partition of Ubuntu 10.10. I have a dual boot (ubuntu,win7) from win7 i log into the ubuntu's partition.

Hardware: ThinkPad x201 Tablet

side question: does virtualbox has the same problem?

Answer 1

You can fix this by disabling TrackPoint scrolling in the Windows control panels.

I had the same problem in a VMware Ubuntu guest on a ThinkPad X220 running Windows 7. With the default mouse/trackpoint settings, the middle button wouldn't register at all when running xev in Ubuntu. Presumably some low-level Windows/Lenovo software layer was capturing middle-button events and interpreting them as scroll commands.

You can resolve this by turning off scrolling altogether. In the mouse control panel, you can set TrackPoint scrolling to either "Scrolling," "Magnifying Glass," or "Neither." I was able to paste in Ubuntu using the middle button right after setting the control to "Neither."

Answer 2

Ubuntu/Gnome doesn't natively treat the middle mouse button as a scrolling wheel. I think it does something odd like paste from clipboard.

You'll need to configure it manually.

For a graphically utility, you can install GPointing Device Settings by running

sudo aptitude install sysfsutils

See: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint