For posterity, I wanted to add information toward my previous thread in case it will help fix the problem in the future but the thread has passed the time limit and has been closed.
Today I noticed something new. I arrived at the login screen with a missing cursor like usual for my VMware window. I left the laptop for a few minutes because I was busy and the GDM login screen was black as what I assume is some sort of screensaver functionality. Moving the mouse to wake up the Zorin VM displays the cursor as it should show at the login screen. Restarting the VM after successfully logging in and having a visible cursor doesn't fix the problem on the next boot either.
So far the cursor can be fixed by:
Clicking the username button and mousing over the text field to turn the cursor into the bar that is "I" shaped in the password textbox. This cursor change brings the pointer cursor back for some reason. These are the steps detailed in the previous thread linked above.
Letting the GDM screen go into the black powersave/screensaver mode then waking the machine up by moving the mouse. The display change at this moment brings back the cursor for some reason.
Hi, I have amended your post title for clarity of anyone else reading this. Everyone should be aware that GNU/Linux comes with a general warning that you cannot expect the same performance in a Virtual Machine environment compared to a 'bare metal' install. It is not incumbent upon distributions to ensure that the OS will run in a VM environment, and one can also argue that GNU/Linux is not incumbent to ensure the OS will run on bare metal as most distributions have a disclaimer that they come without any liability, warranty or guarantee against loss of data. We also need to remind ourselves that computer hardware is generally manufactured for that other OS. Surprisingly, when I have looked at some of the hardware issues facing users here, upon a web search, quite often, if no reference has been made to issues with a specific Operating System, I have had returned searches also throwing up similar issues as much if not more in that other OS. Just over 20 years ago I was an IT Contractor to a company who had a brilliant Windows NT guru. He told me of Microsoft's hardware compliance list. Often individual pieces of hardware met Windows specification. However, if two certified pieces of hardware were put together in the same machine they would not be Microsoft compliant!