Unable to Release Input

I've been running Parallels 8 successfully on my Mac Pro (running 10.8.2) using Windows Vista as the guest OS. After installing a flight sim, I lost the ability to "release input" and my mouse's cursor is stuck within the guest OS window. Following instructions on another thread, I tried changing my keyboard shortcut for releasing input but with no effect. I can't suspend the guest OS as I can't move the cursor outside the guest OS window. How can I get the guest OS to release control of the mouse cursor back to the Mac OS?

One other symptom after the flight sim install was that the guest OS cursor icon had disappeared. I was able to make the cursor visible again from within Windows Vista guest OS. There may be some other setting change that is affecting the ability to release input to the Mac OS.

Thanks,

Will

 

Ctrl+Option to release input. Shut down the VM and restart Parallels, what happened is that Parallels Tools stopped working due to some component crashing. If you don't regain the release Input ability, re-install parallels tools.

 

Still Stuck

Thank you, Specimen, but I am unable to follow your instructions. No matter what I try, I am unable to release input and get the cursor outside the window of the virtual machine. Unless I can do that, is there any way to shut down the VM or reinstall parallels tools? Just to make sure, parallels tools is a something different than parallels desktop, correct? Would it help to rerun the parallels desktop installer?

Thanks, Will

 

Somehow I managed to luck into the keyboard shortcut for shutting down Windows which shut down the VM. I restarted Parallels Desktop and started the VM. I am now able to manually release input using Ctrl+Alt - many thanks! But the auto capture/release of the mouse did not work, even after reinstalling Parallels Tools. When I click on "cog" on the bar at the bottom of the VM, the tool tip shows "Parallels Tools are installed". Virtual Machine > Configure... > Options > Advanced shows my SmartMouse on Auto. I tried setting Smart Mouse from Auto to On, but the auto capturee/release still didn't work. So I presume there is still something wrong with Parallels Tools, but I can't figure out what.

Thanks, Will

 

Like I said, Reinstall Parallels Tools (From the top menu: Virtual Machine -> (Re)Install parallels Tools), even if they are installed already.

 

Tried Reinstalling Parallels Tools

I did try reinstalling Parallels Tools from the Virtual Machine menu (twice), but that did not fix the auto capture/release problem.