Workaround for mouse pointer not working with Linux 2.6.17, 2.6.18, .. kernel on Virtual PC 2007 SP1

If you are using Linux kernel version 2.6.17 or 2.6.18, running under Virtual PC 2007 SP1, the mouse pointer may not work properly.You will see it as frozen in the middle of the screen.

You can make the mouse work by adding the kernel parameter "i8042.noloop".
This was tested on RedHat Linux 5.3 using grub as boot loader.

How to do this?

Testing first to make sure this works:

1. After PC starts, and before Linux is starting, press escape to go to go to grub menu
2. On menu, Press "e" to start editing.
3. Find the line starting like "kernel..." and press "e" to edit this line. Go to the end of line and enter "i8042.noloop" without the quotes. Make sure there is a space after the last parameter and the new. The line, after editing, should now look like "kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet i8042.noloop"
4. Press Enter to accept the editing.
5. Press "b" to boot with the updated kernel parameter

Making a permanent change once happy the above is working

1. On a command prompt, edit file /boot/grub/menu.lst (vi /boot/grub/menu.lst)
2. Find the line starting like "kernel..." and enter "i8042.noloop" at the end of line without the quotes. Make sure there is a space after the last parameter and the new. The line should now look like "kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-128.el5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet i8042.noloop"
3. Save the file and reboot PC

Starting XWindows (KDE or Gnome) under Microsoft virtual PC 2007 sp1

X normally configures itself to use 24 bit screen depth when installed under virtual PC 2007. This causes it to display a corrupted unreadable image.
To overcome this, the X config file needs to be updated to use 16 bit color depth

How to do this? Try the below steps

1. If you are are currently seeing a garbled screen, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch to a text console and login as root
2. Edit the config file using a text editor (vi shown below) and change depth from 24 to 16.
   vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
   locate section "Screen" and change DefaultDepth & also Depth under SubSection "Display". Make sure these are set as 16
3. Once the config changes are saved, restart X. This can be done by switching back using keys Ctrl-Alt-F7 (if you came from Step 1) and then once seeing the garbled screen, using Ctrl-Alt-Backspace . You can also try rebooting the system with the reboot command
   

This normally woks with KDE or Gnome on various distributions running under Microsoft virtual pc 2007 sp1