Workstation 11 .0.0 Build-2305329 hangs - Win 8.1 host

[TkPk]

Hello.  I have a new Dell Inspiron 3847 (i5-4460) with 16G RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4600 with 10.18.10.3960 driver, Windows 8.1 and am trying to run Workstation 11.

The only other applications installed (other than the bloatware that came on the box) on the host are Norton Security, Chrome and CrashPlan, which has backup of the Virtual Machine directory excluded.

The problem is that the Workstation app shows "not responding" often and the guests hang.  After a couple minutes, it all comes back to life.  I'm running between 1 and 3 guests, all either win 7 or win 8.1.

Where should I look to begin to troubleshoot this.  I would have expected this setup to be somewhat responsive.  I've looked at other posts and have disabled "Accelerate 3D graphics" on all 3 VMs.

Thanks

[shellycat]

Thank you.  I've just got the fling driver downloaded and it says it has updated a CPU.  So I'll report back when I've tried both things.

[WhiteKnight]

Thanks for pointing me to the latest Intel drivers. I didn't realize that this hasn't been the latest revision.

Yet, no change. The event log still reports: "No CPUs needed an update.  Your system might not need this driver. ".

I would very much like your team to check wether they might find something in the Workstation 11 code base that might be causing this trouble. Would this be possible?

Have you read my question about the availability of a VMware Workstation keyboard or mouse event hook that might be logging the time the guest requires to respond to those events? In something like a Workstation debug mode, it ought to be possible for such hook to log important and informative information to the VM log file whenever a given latency threshold would be reached.

[admin]

WhiteKnight wrote:

Thanks for pointing me to the latest Intel drivers. I didn't realize that this hasn't been the latest revision.

Yet, no change. The event log still reports: "No CPUs needed an update.  Your system might not need this driver. "

That isn't what I would have expected.  Can you upload a current vmware.log file?

In the meantime, have you tried disabling EPT (i.e. set the preferred execution mode to "Intel VT-x or AMD-V")?

I would very much like your team to check wether they might find something in the Workstation 11 code base that might be causing this trouble. Would this be possible?

The next step along those lines would be to file a support request, so that we can begin trying to reproduce the problem in-house.

Have you read my question about the availability of a VMware Workstation keyboard or mouse event hook that might be logging the time the guest requires to respond to those events? In something like a Workstation debug mode, it ought to be possible for such hook to log important and informative information to the VM log file whenever a given latency threshold would be reached.

I agree that something like this should be possible, but I am unaware of any such facilities in the current product.  Let me think about what we might be able to gather with a vprobes script.

[shellycat]

Hang up repeated. Running Windows 7 guest in full screen mode. I restarted the host after 5 minutes or so.  Again,

mouse did move, no keyboard response, no vmware toolbar coming down, no guest response to anything.

The vmware fling driver worked on boot and cpu microcode update did occur, I checked before starting vmware.

I'm attaching the vmware log.

Windows 8.1 was downloading (but not installing) updates at the time.

I'll try changing the vmware virtual machines settings next.

I

[shellycat]

I have raised a support request on this issue, but of course it has not happened again. 

VMware Support Request 15600276402.

Thank you for your help so far.

[WhiteKnight]

ShellyCat, may I ask you a question?

We both share the same problem. I noticed from my Windows 7/64 event log that Workstation installs a number of invalid USB drivers (event log source: "hcmon").

I believe that these invalid drivers may be the cause for this issue (timeout issues).

Would you mind checking your event log to search for warning events of source "hcmon"?

I have created another thread here in the community, where I have attached a short CSV list of the events that are logged on my machines only after having Workstation installed.

[shellycat]

WhiteKnight,

I've checked Application and System Logs  on the W7 guest and there are no HCmon sources.

There are no hcmon events on the W8.1 host log (the application or system log) either.

The USB is not right on the W7 guest, USB drives are not presented to the VM but also may not be connected to the

host.  I'm trying to work out what it going on, but the W7 guest was from a backup image of a real machine so the

controllers  might be wrong. 

[shellycat]

And problem induced again.  Host machine locked for 20:30 to 20:55 which is pretty "Totally Inability To Support Usual Functionallity".

vmware guest W7/64 running.  vmware log is attached.

Interestingly, I had just started "files history" which started saving data somewhere local.  The vmware machines are in the document folder, so they get saved as well.

I'm reporting this to support incident, as soon as I get the email (on the guest operating system) working again, which  looks like a reboot at the moment, since the

guest is still unresponsive.

[admin]

Please enable extra debugging (VM->Settings->Options->Advanced: Gather debugging information: "full"), and upload the vmware.log the next time this happens.

[shellycat]

This was a hang but not for long.  About 5 minutes or s, then it resumed OK.  The debug is set to full, log attached.

Still waiting for another full hang then I will send a log.

[admin]

The only thing that looks unusual is that some read and write operations to the virtual disk are taking an incredibly long time.  Is there anything unusual about the folder where you store your virtual machines?  Is the drive encrypted?  What anti-virus software are you running on the host?

[shellycat]

The machine is an HP Envy Latop, with stock W8.1/64, 8 G memory.  The drive ia 1Tb 5400 rpm SATA with an 8G SSD cache of some sort.  The only AV is Windows Defender.  The VMs are in

the Documents folder/library  (i.e. c:\users\roger\Documents).  I wonder if I can set exclusions on the AV?

Message was edited by: shellycat. I've set exclusions on the virtual machine folders as a whole.

[shellycat]

Running Linux VM has behaved well over 2 hours use.  Will continue testing, but not around for a few days now.

[WhiteKnight]

Just had another 10 second hang.

Attached please find the log file plus timestamp.

[admin]

I can see that we were 13 seconds behind just after the time indicated, but I don't really see why...unless, perhaps it has something to do with screen composition.

It looks like you don't have the D3DX9 library installed on your host.  Can you try updating DirectX?

[WhiteKnight]

OK, I just updated DirectX now.

I should add that my Windows installation is clean and fresh. Nothing there that could betray Workstation. Well, at least it didn't keep Workstation 10 from working.

J, just between you and me: I don't believe that manually patching microcodes, updating DirectX or similar on the user's machine should be a valid requirement to make Workstation 11 run flawlessly. It should run flawlessly, like Workstation 10 did before, without any amendments to the user's machine. Don't you think so, too?

BTW, I didn't receive any reply yet to the event log entries I've found on two different machines after installing Workstation 11, both running Windows 7/64. Did you have a chance to evaluate these? What do your software development guys say about this? They are solely Workstation 11 related.

[shellycat]

I was given some settings to change from the support incident.  Also the anti-virus scanning is disabled now

on the virtual machine folders.

I have used the Windows 7 guest for about an hour now, including downloading and installing host operating system updates

and it has behaved nicely.

[admin]

WhiteKnight wrote:

OK, I just updated DirectX now.

Great.  Are the D3DX9 errors gone from your vmware.log file?

J, just between you and me: I don't believe that manually patching microcodes, updating DirectX or similar on the user's machine should be a valid requirement to make Workstation 11 run flawlessly. It should run flawlessly, like Workstation 10 did before, without any amendments to the user's machine. Don't you think so, too?

I would agree.  On the microcode front, I have argued that Workstation should automatically update stale microcode, but I have lost that battle.  The Microcode Update Driver Fling was my consolation prize.  As far as DirectX goes, I'm just shooting in the dark.  At this point, I'm pretty sure that the problems you are experiencing are outside my zone of expertise.  If you are still having problems after the DirectX update, I would suggest filing an official service request.

BTW, I didn't receive any reply yet to the event log entries I've found on two different machines after installing Workstation 11, both running Windows 7/64. Did you have a chance to evaluate these? What do your software development guys say about this? They are solely Workstation 11 related.

I haven't looked.  Again, this is outside my zone of expertise.  If you haven't received a response on the Forums, I would suggest filing an official service request

[WhiteKnight]

jmattson schrieb:

I would suggest filing an official service request

I'd do that if I'd get a refund when an issue was found in Workstation due to the service request. But VMware doesn't refund issues that are being reported and may be fixed by an update to Workstation code.

I don't want to pay extra money to VMware for fixing their bugs after already having paid for a buggy piece of software. Others would benefit from the fix, but I would be paying? No way. I'm not Santa Claus.

I strongly suggest VMware to update their support request policy. If they'd offer a refund for support requests unveiling Workstation bugs, I'd file tons of support requests, just for the chance of having found a bug.

[WhiteKnight]

I am just setting up a fresh Windows Server 2008 R2 installation to my Windows 7/64 host OS.

I haven't even installed any software yet within the guest (except VMware tools), so I believe that the guest doesn't have any influence on the hanging.

Have experienced two hangs in the past hour.