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7 Replies Last post: Nov 8, 2008 8:38 AM by Ben Gentile
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exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5

Nov 6, 2008 7:33 AM

Click to view Ben Gentile's profile Lurker Ben Gentile 4 posts since
Oct 25, 2007

Hello,
I just built a new Intel Core2-quad- PC w/ 8GB of ram running Vists-64 bit specifically in order to run muliple VMs simultaneouslty.
I have the PC with the OK on 1 10K RPM drive and with a pair of 10K RPM disks in RAID-0 config for additional VM performance.
I just installed VMware workstation 6.5 and copied an exsiting Windows XP Pro w/SP3 VM on the new machine and as soon as I start it up I get an exception 0xc0000008 error.

I tried recreating the VM and used the existing .vdmk disk image file but get the same error. It was originally created on a Windows XP Pro machine with an Athlon processor if that matters.
The VM works on my Mac using Fusion w/o any problems. I was really hoping to take full advantage of this system to really take advantage of VMware workstation that I use so often but not able to run more then one VM on my current PC. I'm stumpped. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks - Ben

The log and dump files are attached for reference.

Attachments:
Tags: vmware_workstation_6.5, vista64, exception_0xc0000008
Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 6, 2008 4:00 PM
Click to view jameslin's profile Master jameslin 1,045 posts since
Jan 31, 2005 VMware
This is a bug in the 64-bit version of vmware-vmx.exe on Windows.

Could you temporarily rename the vmware-vmx.exe file in the VMware Workstation\x64 directory? This should force VMware Workstation to fall back to the 32-bit version. (You'll still be able to run 64-bit guests, but you won't be able to address more than 4 GB of memory.)
Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 6, 2008 5:52 PM
in response to: jameslin
Click to view Ben Gentile's profile Lurker Ben Gentile 4 posts since
Oct 25, 2007

Thank you very much for the pointer. Would you happen to know if or when this might be fixed?

Regards,

-Ben

Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 6, 2008 7:10 PM
in response to: Ben Gentile
Click to view jameslin's profile Master jameslin 1,045 posts since
Jan 31, 2005 VMware
It should be fixed in a future version, but unfortunately I'm not at liberty to discuss in which version nor when you can expect it.
Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 7, 2008 6:04 AM
in response to: jameslin
Click to view Ben Gentile's profile Lurker Ben Gentile 4 posts since
Oct 25, 2007

Hello again,

Would you happen to know if I could fix this problem if I backed down to version 6.0.x ?

I tried your suggstion and get the following error when starting up a VM:

The following error occurred when starting VMware Workstation.
W32AuthConnectionLaunch: Reply error "The system cannot find the file "c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware-vmx.exe" (code: 2).

It's interesting since I found the file in c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\*x64* folder and not the one referenced in the error message above.

Thanks again,

-Ben

Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 7, 2008 6:07 PM
in response to: Ben Gentile
Click to view jameslin's profile Master jameslin 1,045 posts since
Jan 31, 2005 VMware
Argh. I thought we installed both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of vmware-vmx.exe, but I'm mistaken. Sorry.

It should work if you install Workstation 6.5 on a 32-bit machine and copy its vmware-vmx.exe file to your VMware Workstation directory (or manage to extract it from the installer somehow; I'm not familiar with that, though).

Downgrading to Workstation 6.0.x would work too since that didn't ship with a 64-bit version of vmware-vmx.exe.
Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 7, 2008 6:38 PM
in response to: jameslin
Click to view jameslin's profile Master jameslin 1,045 posts since
Jan 31, 2005 VMware
Actually, if you have a .CAB extraction tool (7-zip will do it; I think WinZip and other archiving tools can do it too), then you can dig into

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\pkg\VMX_Re~1.cab

extract the vmware_vmx.exe file, rename it to vmware-vmx.exe, and put it in your VMware Workstation directory.

Alternatively, here's a command-line way that doesn't depend on any third-party tools:

expand "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\pkg\VMX_Re~1.cab" -F:vmware_vmx.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation"
ren "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware_vmx.exe" vmware-vmx.exe
Reply Re: exception 0xc0000008 on VMW 6.5 Nov 8, 2008 8:38 AM
in response to: jameslin
Click to view Ben Gentile's profile Lurker Ben Gentile 4 posts since
Oct 25, 2007

Hooray!

Thanks James. The last fix did the trick.

I look forward to a perminate fix hopefully in the next point release.

Regards,
-Ben

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