Capturing and Releasing the Keyboard and Mouse Input

To start working in a virtual machine, you need first to capture the keyboard and mouse input in the virtual machine. To this effect:

1. move the mouse pointer over the virtual machine window
2. click in the window.

• When the keyboard and mouse input is captured in the virtual machine, you cannot move the pointer out of the virtual machine window and all keystrokes and button clicks go to the virtual machine. To release the keyboard and mouse back to the primary OS, press Ctrl+Alt. The keyboard and mouse will be released immediately.

Note: The default hot key combinations can be configured on the Keyboard and Mouse pane of the Preferences dialog.

If you want to automatically capture and release the keyboard and mouse input, you should install Parallels Tools in your virtual machine. After the Parallels Tools installation, you can capture and release the mouse and keyboard input more easily:

• click anywhere in the virtual machine window to capture the input
• click anywhere outside the virtual machine window to release the input.

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