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gdalton
Contributor
Contributor

"Out of Memory" errors after Windows 10 Creators Update

Windows 8.1 guest on Windows 10 host will only run for a few minutes before getting memory error message.

Have had to hard reset host machine 3 times this evening when guest VM running in background.

Happens even when nothing running in guest OS.

Windows 10 host seems to run fine so far without VMware running.

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mheister
Contributor
Contributor

That may be possible. How would I verify that? I don't have VMware Player, or Workstation on this machine, but it was built from an image created from???? I assumed that the splwow64.exe was a 64 bit application, and was the same application referenced in the VMware Player memory leak issue from earlier in the thread.

I appreciate your forwarding this up to the right team to deal with it. I wasn't getting any response after posting so I just started messaging VMware staff who had participated in the thread trying to get some attention.

Mike

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MrRic
Contributor
Contributor

I found the answer to this in another forum.

Go to the VM Settings and uninstall the virtual printer.  Yes, I know it doesn't make sense, but that is where the memory leak that causes the Host to crash on an "out of memory" error that if you are lucky eventually you get that it is video related, not RAM related, which makes even less sense.

However, uninstalling the virtual printer (thinprint) from the settings fixes the problem.

The workaround is to install pdf printer software (such as Bullzip Print to PDF, which is free) and printing to a file on the host and then opening that on the host and printing to whatever printer you used to print to.

MaxStr
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Unfortunately, this does not apply to the horizon view client.

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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

OK, I have a response from the Horizon team, and it seems to correlate very well with the observations made throughout this thread.  I'm operating quite a bit out of my usual domain here; I'll do my best to get things right, but please forgive me if I make a mistake.

The root-cause is a defect in Windows Creators Update which causes a memory leak whenever a 32-bit application attempts to communicate with the print spooler service on a 64-bit operating system.  Such communications goes through the splwow64.exe Windows service, and it is splwow64.exe which leaks the memory.

Horizon Client 4.3 (32-bit and 64-bit) include a 32-bit Thinprint client, and so it will always trigger this problem.

Horizon Client 4.4 32-bit includes a 32-bit Thinprint client, but the 64-bit flavor now includes a 64-bit Thinprint client.  The 64-bit flavor of Thinprint does not trigger the memory leak in splwow64.exe.  (Workstation 12.5.6 presumably also updates the Thinprint client components to 64-bit.)

BUT... if you're using Horizon Client 4.4+ 64-bit with RDP, Horizon launches the MS RDP client, but that MS RDP component which is launched is apparently 32-bit, thus leading to the memory leak again.  (I'm a bit unclear on the Thinprint client's involvement in that scenario!)

So, in summary, just like we've found in various comments in this thread:

Horizon Client 4.3 is always affected by this, because the 32-bit Thinprint client on a 64-bit host OS always causes splwow64 to leak memory.

Horizon Client 4.4+ 32-bit on a 64-bit host OS is always affected by this for the same reason.

Horizon Client 4.4+ 64-bit is affected by this if you're using RDP, but should be OK when you use Blast.

We're working with Microsoft to address the underlying issue.  Until then, hopefully the above information will help you understand what's happening and which workarounds or solutions are available to you.

Cheers,

--

Darius

mheister
Contributor
Contributor

That is good news, Darius. I really appreciate the detailed response, and it is great to know that VMware is working on a solution. Hopefully MS will fix this issue with the full Creators Update roll out, if not sooner. In the mean time, renaming the thinprint RDP dll corrects the issue for the time being. I'll see about getting my organization to turn on Blast. It is probably past due for that anyway.

Mike

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wdaley
Contributor
Contributor

Anything further on this? We still need to disable Thinprint on any Windows 10 machines that are using the Horizon Client and receive the Creators update.  This is an inconvenience because our users do need to print.

Can you provide an update on the situation?

Thanks.

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JJaamac
Contributor
Contributor

Actually you increase the memory space and you have to to make less than it was and try and if it didn't work make it more less number until it works.

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