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newlvgeek
Contributor
Contributor

Windows 7 Host, Workstation 7 - VM's Hang

I'm running a Dell E6400 dual-core laptop with 8 GB RAM with a Windows 7 64 bit Professional as the Host OS. It is fully patched. VMware Workstation 7 is installed. Running multiple Windows XP SP3 virtual machines and all are configured well within my RAM and core/processor limitations.

I'm getting frequent app hangs for my VM's, although they are transient. They usually last 5-10 seconds. I have adjusted every setting that I know of to try to discover the problem, but to no avail. It does not matter if I have only one VM open or several.

The app hang is reported by the Host OS, but the VM's do not crash, they just pause and it is back to business as normal. There is nothing specific about what I'm doing when this occurs, and it is totally random.

Is anyone else having this problem? I really need a solution because it has become very tiresome!

I was able to capture the error from Windows...

Description:

A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:

Problem Event Name: AppHangB1

Application Name: vmware.exe

Application Version: 7.0.0.9911

Application Timestamp: 4ae04519

Hang Signature: 6622

Hang Type: 0

OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48

Locale ID: 1033

Additional Hang Signature 1: 66226dae33e35cd83ccffcf20bd92934

Additional Hang Signature 2: 9198

Additional Hang Signature 3: 919873aec2a79dbd2cab3906602078eb

Additional Hang Signature 4: 6622

Additional Hang Signature 5: 66226dae33e35cd83ccffcf20bd92934

Additional Hang Signature 6: 9198

Additional Hang Signature 7: 919873aec2a79dbd2cab3906602078eb

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Message was edited by: newlvgeek

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20 Replies
SteveF4095
Contributor
Contributor

I'm having similar issues running either 1 or 2 Windows XP professional guests using VMWare Player 3.01 in a Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit host. My platform is a Dell Studio XPS 16 with 8GB RAM with an i7 processor. The VMWare Player freezes for up to 90s every 15 - 20 minutes, then just carries on as if nothing happened!

Other environmental factors are:

Connected to a Wireless network on the Host and using Bridging on the guests, each guest has it's own unique IP address. Each guest functions fine when the Player is not frozen. Makes no difference whether the laptop is on mains or battery power.

I have no idea where to start looking for clues.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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frabiacca
Contributor
Contributor

i've the same situation as SteveF4095. Did anyone cope with it?

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JustCallMeBob
Contributor
Contributor

I've been in the same boat for 6+ months and haven't received any solution. My hangs are often associated with the hardrive thrashing for several seconds, to sometimes several minutes. In my case I have a Dell E6500 with 4gigs of memory. I run a 64bit host and guest, and only one guest at a time.

My company has been looking into the option of VM on all of our end user machines (meaning buying over 1000 workstation licenses). However, with the continuous problems that myself and others have experienced, it looks like we are going with Virtual PC. Although it only supports 32bit, it atleast works. Being free and being that it works put it over the top. Vmware will only be needed when we have no other choice (IE: where the advances snapshotting is required).

I'm a huge fan of Vmware and hope they get these issues resolved, but we can only wait so long. I have a hunch that the problem may not truly be theirs. It could very likely be they way their product interacts with a very select subset of hardware (IE: The Dell E-Series)

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

first thing to check with occasional hangs is Antivirus-tools scanning vmdks




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- Workstation FAQ -[ MOA-liveCD|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VM-Sickbay


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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jessepool
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi newlvgeek, SteveF4095, frabiacca, Bob.

Can you upload vm-support? There should be an option under "Help" in the Workstation UI titled "Collect Support Data" that will guide you through the process.

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mike111
Contributor
Contributor

I am having the same issues and I am using a box that I built myself, with i7 cpu, 8gb RAM. So this is not confined to Dells!

When I first installed Vmware workstation 7.01, it was working very well. Then it got worse. These are existing VMs that I have built. I am using the VMs with Vmware Fusion as well and they seem to be fine. I even built a Win7 VM from scratch with nothing on it except Google Chrome. Again, every so often, the VM just does a lot of disk thrashing. I suspect Vmware workstation 7.01 is the issue. Turned off all antivirus programs and they are not the issue.

I may try to go back to the earlier version, workstation 7.0 when I get some time this weekend.

Symptoms: Every 15-20 minutes, the disk light comes on with a lot of thrashing. Noticed with the Resource Monitor on the host that the VMs were doing a lot of reading from the disk.

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SteveF4095
Contributor
Contributor

Hi again.

Thanks to the posters who offered some help. In the end, for a bunch of reasons, I decided to install Workstation 7.01. I needed the extra capability that comes with the Virtual Network Editor among other things. I have now been running 2 * XP Pro 32-bit VMs at the same time inside my Win7 Ultimate 64-bit host for about a week with no issues whatsoever. I can't therefore offer any other suggestions to those of you who are still experiencing the disk-thrashing.

Good luck.

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pctcc
Contributor
Contributor

I have similar problem. I'm running XP SP3 in a laptop hp nx9420 (Intel T7200), 4GB RAM, with VMware Workstation 7.0.1 and a Windows 7 as guest. Time by time, few times a day, VMware/Windows7 hang the machine completely between few seconds up to 90 secondes. During this time, nothing is possible and the hard drive LED stay fully open...full busy.. broken network connection during this time also. No crash, so significative event logs, just hangs. When back at normal status, everything works fine, no error.

Any new idea to solve ?

We are closer to downgrade to VMware 7 (if working no hang) or move to VirtualPC.

Thanks !

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Windows7Guy
Contributor
Contributor

Hello newlvgeek,

Just an FYI, Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on. You will also need to download Virtual PC.

Both items can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Additionally, Microsoft does have an official Windows 7 Support Forum specifically for IT Pros located here http://tinyurl.com/7jq7ps . It is supported by product specialists as well as engineers and support teams. You may want to also check the threads available there for additional assistance and feedback.

John M

Microsoft Windows Client Team

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JustCallMeBob
Contributor
Contributor

Does Microsoft even support their own opperating systems yet? Last I checked, Virtual PC didn't support 64bit guests.

Hence, if you want 64bit guest then Vmware or VirtualBox is your best bet. Vmware is good for special feaures, VirtualBox is good for speed, VirtualPC is good for nothing.

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tricky911t
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Newlvgeek, I've got the semi robust version of your machine (a quasi military spec version extra security devices and daylight viewable monitor are the main differences) anyway I've not had these problems you are experiencing but you might want to check you have the latest versions of all the dell drivers including the bios updates. IIRC the bios is no22 now, I know Dell have released some driver versions a while back as well.

FWIW.

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Recage
Contributor
Contributor

I had exactly the same behavior as you described, although not on a Dell (instead on a custom built computer, Windows 7 x64 Ultimate).

The solution was to completely disable the Windows Defender service (Go to ControlPanel > AdministrativeTools > Services, scroll down to WindowsDefender and Stop the service). Before that I have tried to put the directory of my VMs on the exlusion list of WindowsDefender, but that did not entirely solve the problem. I will further research that topic.

Let me know if that solves your problem.

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tricky911t
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yeah I've completely uninstalled it becuase I noticed when I was running multi VM Guests on my 6monitor setup, MS Security Essentials was downloading and scanning all at the same time which meant it just bogged down the HD's to a crawl.

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BillE
Contributor
Contributor

Same problem but with version 6.5

I have found that using Ultimate Defrag to sequence all the Disk files together reduced the issue. Also, using allocated rather than dynamic reduced the issue. My guess is that fragmentation increases the problem. I currently just create a single file fully allocated and use Ultimate Defrag to place it on the outer edge of the disk, I have better performance and less hangs.

I have read places where using SSD's eliminated the problem.

-Bill Egge

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SteveF4095
Contributor
Contributor

Yes!!

After purchasing and installing Workstation 7, I noticed after a couple of days' use that I was still getting the "hangs" as before. I have now disabled the Windows Defender service and hey presto - no more hangs. Brilliant. Thanks very much for this. It has restored my faith in VMWare.

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Recage
Contributor
Contributor

Glad that I could help you.

Regards, Recage

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plaskey
Contributor
Contributor

I do not believe this problem is resolved so I wanted to add the details of my experience in the hopes that VMware will be able to resolve this permanently.

I have exactly the same problem on a Dell Latitude E6400 with 4GB of RAM and 60 GB Free on the HDD and hardware virtualization turned on in BIOS. Windows XP Pro 32-bit host running Windows XP Pro 32-bit guest, both with all the latest patches from Microsoft. Guest is a linked clone with snapshots turned off (virtual HDD not preallocated, permanent). Guest VM configured for 1GB RAM. Both host and guest HDD's have been thoroughly defragmented using MyDefrag 4.3.1 (System Disk Monthly script).

I am running Microsoft Security Essentials, latest beta version, on the host. While this provides Windows Defender service, which has been implicated in this problem, I have disabled the service and see no difference in VMware problem.

Here is my experience:

After booting my E6400 I open VMware Workstation v7.1.1 build-282343 before I do anything else on the host. I then boot the Windows XP virtual machine and do nothing - just let it run. Occasionally I will notice that both the host and guest screens stop updating, though I can see the mouse cursor move. If I click outside the VM, the cursor jumps back inside the VM. Using Ctrl-Alt to release the cursor does nothing. At this time I also notice that the host HDD activity light is on solid. I have no control over either machine beyond the cursor movement. In fact, Control-Alt-Delete does nothing. After several seconds everything returns to normal. No crashes, no data loss.

I am completely loosing the use of my computer for about 2 minutes several times an hour. This is making it very difficult to use VMware. I have been a fan of this product for many years so I have high hopes that this will be resolved soon.

Thank you,

Peter

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Scissor
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I do not believe this problem is resolved so I wanted to add the details of my experience in the hopes that VMware will be able to resolve this permanently.

I have exactly the same problem on a Dell Latitude E6400 with 4GB of RAM and 60 GB Free on the HDD and hardware virtualization turned on in BIOS. Windows XP Pro 32-bit host running Windows XP Pro 32-bit guest, both with all the latest patches from Microsoft.

- E6400 processor = Dual Core (so, for best performance, you should not configure any single Guest with more than 1 vCPU)

- 32-bit host w/4GB RAM installed = ~3.25 GB usable Host RAM.

Guest VM configured for 1GB RAM.

- Is your Guest configured for more than 1 vCPU? If so, change it to 1 vCPU.

- Configure your Guest's CD-ROM to start Disconnected.

- Disable any VMware Shared Folders you might be using.

I am running Microsoft Security Essentials, latest beta version, on the host. While this provides Windows Defender service, which has been implicated in this problem, I have disabled the service and see no difference in VMware problem.

- Please exclude the directory containing your Guests from the AV Real Time Scanner.

If you attach the vmware.log file from the directory containing your Guest I can take a look at it.

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plaskey
Contributor
Contributor

One more piece of information. I found an old thread discussing a similar problem on Windows 98. At that time the problem was linked to the CD ROM driver. Taking a cue from this, I disconnected the CD ROM drive from my VM in Workstation. This seems to have eliminated the problem for me. Maybe this is a regression in the new version (7.1.1) of Workstation?

-Peter

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