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20,058 Views 4 Replies Last post: Sep 17, 2008 7:55 PM by jrack09 RSS
tacrow Lurker
tacrow
2 posts since
May 20, 2007
Currently Being Moderated

Jul 14, 2008 4:26 PM

VMware Host Agent service terminated

 

I'm running VMware 2.0 RC1 under Microsoft Windows 2008 64-bit server on a Dell XPS with a 500Gb hard drive, 4Gb of RAM, and an Intel Q6600 quard core processor. VMware had been running very well (thanks for the improvements to the UI with the latest releases, by the way!). Recently, though, I can't get the UI to start. The Application log in Event Viewer has this error:

 

 

  The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF).

 

 

I found a few similiar references in the Server 2.0 RC1 community, but none of the fixes seemed to help. I think it was working fine until the last round of Microsoft patches, but I can't be sure.

 

 

I'm not having a lot of luck finding the error log(s) under Windows 2008 server. Where should I look? What other things can I check?

 

 

I've tried uninstalling and reinstallating, but it's still not working.

 

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions/help!

 

 

tacrow Lurker
tacrow
2 posts since
May 20, 2007
Currently Being Moderated
1. Jul 15, 2008 5:30 PM in response to: tacrow
Re: VMware Host Agent service terminated

 

I researched the issue more and found a directory called c:\ProgramData\VMware. In it was a subdirectory called VMware Server, which contained hostd-7.log. In it, I found a reference to a panic induced by a malformed bit of XML.

 

 

Now, I had already uninstalled and reinstalled, and several of those cycles included removing registry entries and C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware. But I'd always left c:\ProgramData\VMware. So,I unstalled VMware, removed the registry entry, removed the Program Files (x86)\VMware directory, and C:\ProgramData\VMware. After a reboot, I reinstalled, and now it's working. I left C:\Virtual Machines intact,so I could just re-add them to inventory.

 

 

Not sure what corrupted the file (config.xml?), but at least I'm back up and running.

 

 

Hope this helps someone else.

 

 

Expert VMware Employees
rrdharan
471 posts since
Dec 16, 2004
Currently Being Moderated
2. Jul 16, 2008 12:51 PM in response to: tacrow
Re: VMware Host Agent service terminated

So I think during uninstall we live config files alone (i.e. the stuff in ProgramData), because these have things like your VM inventory and autostart information that we want to preserve across upgrade or in case you do a reinstall.

 

Of all the config files, the most important one required for hostd (VMware Host Agent), and the least tolerant to corruption, is config.xml (in ProgramData\VMware\VMware Server\hostd).

JayCagey Lurker
JayCagey
1 posts since
Sep 8, 2008
Currently Being Moderated
3. Sep 10, 2008 12:01 PM in response to: tacrow
Re: VMware Host Agent service terminated

I just ran into this problem with VMware 2.0 RC2.  After reading this post, I checked into the logs and config files and discovered a corrupted xml file named 'datastores.xml'.  When I opened it, I saw a bunch of dots instead of xml-formatted text. 

 

It was located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Server\hostd.  There was another file named "datastores.xml.default" in this directory, so I backed up the corrupt file, made a copy of datastores.xml.default and renamed it to "datastores.xml".  VMware started up without a hitch.

jrack09 Lurker
jrack09
1 posts since
Sep 17, 2008
Currently Being Moderated
4. Sep 17, 2008 7:55 PM in response to: JayCagey
Re: VMware Host Agent service terminated

 

Yea this worked for me to on my Vista machine.

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

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