I've been working on setting up a new SYSPREP Win7. I started the build on a virtual machine running on top of VMware vSphere. I tweaked it and got it like I wanted it. Then I went take the image in Zenworks and realized I couldn't get into the imaging mode. To load the imaging menu you press CTRL + ALT during the PXE boot portion, but CTRL + ALT is also the same key combination to release control of the virtual machine window. I could have just booted it from a Zenworks boot CD, but I wanted to use the PXE boot. I looked through the options in vCenter and couldn't find anything related to the changing those settings. Then I turned to Google and I found a bunch of posts talking about how you couldn't change it. The outlook was starting to look a little bleak, but then I stumbled into a workaround. Apparently, the standalone program VMPlayer and the vSphere console use the same configuration file. You can find that file here:
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\VMware\preferences.ini
There are lot of guides on how to tweak the settings in that file. But here's the settings that were relevant to what I wanted to do.
pref.hotkey.control = "true"
pref.hotkey.gui = "true"
pref.hotkey.shift = "false"
pref.hotkey.alt = "false"
These settings change the CTRL+ALT combination to CTRL + Win (that's "gui" above). Keep in mind that the "Hint" across the top of the window still says press CTRL+ALT to release the cursor. You also have to close and reopen the window for it to pickup the change. I panicked at first because I changed the settings, couldn't get them to work and then forgot that I had changed them. Later when I went back into a VM I couldn't get out of it. I'll admit, it did take me minute to realize what I had done.
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