H ,amy vm are you running under workstation at a time? Does this occur with just a single VM running? When is the last time you ran a virus scan?

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set back to one CPU and try
mainmem.useNamedFile = "false"
in the vmx-file

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description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

post more details - a vmware.log for example

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description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

I have experienced the same. Startup speeds return to normal when all VMware windows services are disabled via the service control panel.

While I have no proof to back things up, I suspect some kind of conflict between HP ProtectTools and VMware Player at least.

Rather laboriously I uninstalled each of teh HP ProtectTools in turn but didn't get my system to respond after each reboot.

Eventually I uninstalled the HP Protect Tools Control/Management Suite and all of a sudden performance returned to normal.

I can't use the fingerprint scanner or any useful stuff but at least I have a laptop that works again! I can't find any fixes from HP for the Protect Tools or anything from VMWare to fix the problem but I'm pretty sure that's conclusive testing.

VMWare + HP ProtectTools = unusable laptop

VMWare - HP ProtectTools = performance back to good

http://www.mcgeown.co.uk/BlogEngine/post/2009/02/18/VMWare-Server-The-VMware-Host-Agent-service-terminated-with-service-specific-error-4294967295-%280xFFFFFFFF%29.aspx

I found this blog which refers to a corrupt datastores.xml file.

However, I do not have this file in the location specified? I'm a little puzzled by this? I also had the error in my windows event logs:

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

Perhaps this will help others too?

Here's what the post says:

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

Having just rebooted my laptop, I clicked on the link to open VMWare Infrastructure Web Access in the my browser and was slightly puzzled by the "page cannot be displayed" error. I figured it was probably the VMWare Server Web Access service not starting for some reason, so I opened services.msc and checked it out. The Web Access service was actually running, but the Host Agent service was not, so I tried to start it - it failed. Dutifully opening Event Viewer for some more information I found the error:

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

Great. Thanks for the elaboration. Time to check the VMWare logs, (c:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMWare Server\) - the most recent of which contained the following entry:

2009-02-18 10:55:27.908 'App' 4408 info Trying hostsvc
+ 2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 panic error: not well-formed (invalid token)+
+ 2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 panic backtrace:(backtraces not supported)+
+ 2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 info Win32 service stopped+

A bit of Googling pointed me in the right direction, "not well-formed" refers to the XML config files which are stored in c:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMWare Server\hostd, after that it was just a case of opening each one in turn until I found the malformed one. I backed it up and replaced it with a default version, and lo and behold, my services started!

fantastic stuff.. this plagued me as well.. turned out to be the datastores.xml fine was corrupted/empty. There was however another version of the file called datastores.xml.default. so i just renamed that to be datastores.xml and started the VMware Host Agent. Perfect, Thanks!!

best

Monday 30 March 2009 16:02

had the same problem, corrupt datastores.xml file, moved it out and started the VMware Host Agent.
Worked a charm....Thanks!

mack

Thursday 11 June 2009 10:16

Thanks to all of you for taking the time out to share this with all of us! This fixed my problem within minutes!