Blank "gray" screen when trying to log in

[FireDog7881]

I have a couple servers that I am seeing this problem on. All servers are Windows 2003 SP1. All servers are running on different ESX 3.5 hosts. The servers sit for awhile (working in the background) at the "Press CTRLALTDEL" screen until a user comes by and wants to log into the console. When the person presses CTRLALTDEL the window goes away and nothing happens. You are still able to log in through RDP and work just fine, you are able to send a message to the console through the Terminal Services Manager, and the message pops up and you can hit the OK button to get rid of the message. But the login screen never comes up to log in.

I was reading around on the internet and somebody had mentioned some problems of this and they were using fiber channel "round robin" for the data stores that the VMs are stored on. I have "round robin" turned on as well and I was thinking that maybe switching paths was causing a problem in Windows.

We were getting this problem a few months ago. I moved the VMs from one storage array (EVA 8K) to a different storage array (EVA 6K). The problem went away for a few months and is now back. I have turned off "round robin" in these specific LUNs to see if this is the problem. It will take months before I can say that this is the reason so I can't really do too much trouble shooting, unless it happens again in a week or two.

What I would like to know, is where I can look to find out if there are any problems with anything on the ESX host pertaining to the VMs that this is happening to? I have already checked the log file within the VM folder itself and there is nothing in there to indicate any problems. I have also checked the Windows logs and there is nothing in there. I am completely baffled at this because nothing shows up anywhere.

Any assitance would be greatly appreciated. I would also like this to be put up as a possible side effect of "round robin", this is for any moderators that are watching.

[kastlr]

Hi,

did you ever try to open a second session to these servers?

Or to connect via the Web Console?

Did you see the same behaivior when you directly connect the VIC to one ESX Server which does host such a VM?

When I remember right, I did see this "sometimes" in my LAB.

I did restart the VC Server as the connection to the VM's are handled by this server.

I don't think there's a problem within windows, I would bet the VC server doesn't "grab" the screnn change correctly.

Hope this helps a bit.

[FireDog7881]

Thanks for the prompt response.

I thought about that, but when I sent a message to the console from the Terminal Serivces Manager I saw the message pop up and I was able to interact with the screen because I could click the OK button to get rid of the message on the screen. I still tried your suggestion and connect the VIC directly to the ESX host and opened the console that way, I still go the same gray screen.

Because I got the message from the Terminal Services Manager and was able to interact with it is why I have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with Windows. In particular I think it is something the MSGINA thing, which I beleive is what the logon screen is called. There is nothing in the logs of the server to indicate that there is a problem though.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to Vi: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[GroverJoe]

Send a CTRL-ALT-DELETE to the guest OS and see if you can bring up the task manager. If so, go to File -> New Task (Run) and run explorer.exe. See if that brings up your desktop. If it does, then the problem is software related within the VM and nothing to do with it being virtualized. I see this fairly often on Windows XP machines, but haven't had it happen on any servers yet.