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MichaelMullan
Contributor
Contributor

VM Workstation causes my laptop to reboot.

I just downloaded & installed Workstation 7.1, and since then if VMWare is running, my PC will randomly just up and reboot.

It's a brand new Dell M6500 laptop. I Called Dell & they wakledme thruthe Hardware diagnostis, which all passed. I'm left woth VMW 7.1 as being the culprit. Has anyone heard of this before?

Michael.

Danes Bridge Enterprises

www.danesbridge.com

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Scissor
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Most likely one of the applications that Dell bundles or includes in the base system image is causing a conflict with VMware.

Not that I am a programmer, but if you want to attach the latest crash minidump file to a reply I can look at it and see if anything jumps out at me. I believe the files are located in c:\windows\minidump

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bsdjunkie
Contributor
Contributor

I also have a Del M6500 with Windows 7 x64 bit and 4 G of ram.

We have a base Windows 7 image here at my place of employment and it does exactly the same thing with Vmware 7.1.0 -> reboots unexpectedly with everything wiped right out from under me.

I have in fact isolated this problem to Vmware. I try to stay out of the virtual machines as much as possible either pause or suspend them - which seems to help in preventing the unexpected reboots.

But, if I stay in a virtual for more than an hour or so, I am taking great risk of having everything reboot again.

I am hopeful that some day VMware will find this out and fix it.

Mark

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Scissor
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I am hopeful that some day VMware will find this out and fix it.

Looks like the problem is not specific to VMware. Here is a VirtualBox user on a M6500 laptop with the same problem as you: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32667

I would check for an updated BIOS. Looks like BIOS A04 was released last month.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ServiceTag=&SystemI...

If the BIOS update does not fix the problem I would then look for other Firmware updates, and also for updated hardware drivers. Looking at the linked Dell page there are several drivers that have been updated in the past few months.

Keep us posted on your findings.

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jbuerger
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same problem with an HP EliteBook 8530P with 8 GB RAM. Have you found the issue yet?

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Scissor
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I have the same problem with an HP EliteBook 8530P with 8 GB RAM. Have you found the issue yet?

Which of the suggestions from my last post have you tried so far? Look for updated BIOS and drivers, etc. Looks like your model laptop has a new BIOS version F.12 available dated June 2010. (and a BIOS update from last September (F.0F) fixes "Fixes an intermittent issue where the notebook/laptop may automatically restart (without user intervenion) when it is in the Standby or Sleep state")

Link to updates: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3782359&...

Just for fun, because I've seen it cause hangs/delays in the past, try upgrading HP Protect Tools (HP Security Software Suite) to the latest version. ( http://communities.vmware.com/message/1286971 )

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PnwGuy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I've had Workstation 7.1 spontaneously just exit as if I'd closed it with a VM running taking all my work with it. I've also had it effectively crash the Win 7 64 bit host. I never had either problem (or any problem for that matter) with Workstation 7.0. 7.1 seems far less stable in many ways--at least on a Win 7 x64 host.

If you haven't already, go into Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced Tab > Startup and Recovery and make sure the "Automatically restart" box is NOT checked and "Write an event to the system log" IS checked. That way an app crash that's harming the OS, in theory, shouldn't cause a re-boot.

So, if all else fails, you might try downgrading to 7.0 and see if that fixes your problem? If you're curious about my other 7.1 observations check out:

7.1 Less Stable Than 7.0 ?

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bsdjunkie
Contributor
Contributor

Scissor,

Thank you for the helpful driver posting! I have updated my BIOS, sound and video to the most current on the Dell site. The video improvement is pretty remarkable. I will let you know if this has resolved the crashing issue with VMware.

Thanks again & sorry it too so long to reply. Have been pretty busy lately.

Mark

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bsdjunkie
Contributor
Contributor

Pnwguy:

Am also trying your suggestion of changing the reboot settings so that it will just write the exception log file and not necessairily restart whenever something happens to an application.

So I am hoping that the driver update and reboot exception settings make it work well.

Thanks again everyone for your replies. I will post follow-up on whether it happens again or not.

Mark

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bsdjunkie
Contributor
Contributor

To all:

So far with all of my above-mentioned driver updates, it still crashes occasionally.

Mark

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Soupskin
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same issue with 5 M6500 laptops all running Windows 7 x64.

They all have the latest BIOS. Some have all the drivers available from Dell, some have only the drivers that are not automatically installed and updated by Windows which includes the TPM module and the media card reader.

They are all set to not reboot after a system crash but they still reboot and leave no error in the logs. I have spoken with Dell about this on multiple occasions with no success.

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rallan80
Contributor
Contributor

I have had the same problem with both VM Workstation 6.5 and 7.1 on my M6500. This is very frustrating not being able to find a suitable solution. I've tried absolutely everything to fix this problem, and nothing has worked yet. Please keep us informed if anyone finds a solution.

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MichaelMullan
Contributor
Contributor

My solution was to install a second HDD in the M6500 and install windows 7 on that. You can press F12 at boot time and change the boot order, so you can easily pick which OS to boot into.

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bsdjunkie
Contributor
Contributor

Installing a secondary OS/HDD is not an option for me. Choose which OS? You mean boot to XP 64 bit? Not much of a choice.  Still pretty unhappy with the new VMware. Rebooted several times on me last week when I was working and testing.  Mark

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paolino156
Contributor
Contributor

same issue for my brand new laptop Dell M6500 8G Ram win7 professional 64 bit

I already updated all drivers and made sure bios was up to date

never tried workstation 7.0, i started straight with 7.1.0 then updated to 7.1.1 and now to 7.1.2 but no improvements

when i have a virtual machine up and running the physical machine just suddenly reboots wiping out all my work, this happens no matter what I do on the host or the virtual machine, no matter if I have one or more virtual machines running.

Sometimes it let me work for a full day, some other day (like recently happened) it gives me a nightmare 10 bare minutes of work time rebooting maybe dozens of times in a few hours.

If the solution is downgrading to workstation 7.0 please someone give instructions on how to deal with vmware tools downgrade on virtual machines.

One more information: I also tried to uninstall vmware workstation and install vmware player: no change, same reboot issue.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

try with Workstation 6.5.5 instead - thats the way more mature product

anyway - do you have vmware.logs from that VM that crashes the host ?
attach them please


________________________________________________
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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bsdjunkie
Contributor
Contributor

I have found that this usually only happens on my Del M6500 when the virtual machine is bridged to the local area network.

If I choose 'host only' or 'no network', then I don't have the issue.

I do sometimes need to use network resources during my testing, but I try to keep it at a minimum time-wise and suspend the virtual machine whenever I am not actively using it.

Your mileage may vary....

I've also heard that the same issue occurs with Sun Virtual Box with the Del M6500.

I wonder if it's just inferior hardware in the Dell machine.

Mark

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paolino156
Contributor
Contributor

Hi all,

I finally decided to downgrade from Workstation 7.1.3 to 7.0.1...

up to now no more unexpected host reboots (since a couple of weeks) but just a few minutes ago I got a good old blue screen (on the virtual machine) saying: BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER

while only an external mouse was connected to usb port.

My feeling is that Workstation 7.0.1 works better on my laptop, but still something is wrong.

Somebody was suggesting to downgrade further down to 6.5 but I guess this doesn't run on win7 64. Am I wrong?

cheers to the club members!

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Hi

I am running 6.5.5 on Windows 7 64bit since a while now.
And I definetely do not call it a downgrade !!!

Only use WS 7 to keep up with the bugs Smiley Sad


________________________________________________
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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paolino156
Contributor
Contributor

Hi continuum,

Thanks a lot for the tip, I'll try 6.5.5 as soon as I can...

By the way, can you guess which features are we going to miss using 6.5.5 instead of 7.1.3 ?

cheers

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