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TSerzhO_
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Workstation Player: VMs (Win7, Win10) freeze at some point of being run for some time.

PRODUCT VERSION: VMware® Workstation 15 Player 15.1.0 build-13591040

HOST OS VERSION: 64-bit (x64) MS Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (Ukrainian)

ENDING (KEY) LINES FROM ONE OF THE LOGS (attached):

I125: Msg_Post: Error

I125: [msg.log.error.unrecoverable] VMware Player unrecoverable error: (vmx)

I125+ VERIFY bora\lib\vmdb\wqpool.c:750

I125: [msg.panic.haveLog] A log file is available in "Q:\VMs\10188968-71731-2240\vmware.log". 

I125: [msg.panic.requestSupport.withoutLog] You can request support. 

I125: [msg.panic.requestSupport.vmSupport.vmx86]

I125+ To collect data to submit to VMware technical support, run "vm-support".

I125: [msg.panic.response] We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

I125: ----------------------------------------

I125: VmdbPipeStreamsOvlError Couldn't read: (109) The pipe has been ended.

I125: VmdbCnxDisconnect: Disconnect: closed pipe for pub cnx '/db/connection/#1/' (-32)

I125: VUIDialogDequeue: found 0 vmdb ui connections; canceling dialogs

I125: Exiting

The VMs were created several months ago (in one of the earlier Player builds), since when and up until some point had been working just fine...

Everything bad started at some day (perhaps few weeks ago), when I noticed that my Win7 and Win10 VMs stopped playing sound - they both started displaying the following error messages instead (from one of the attached logs😞

I125: Msg_Post: Warning

I125: [msg.sound.stream.error.start.generic] Error starting sound stream.

I125: [msg.sound.stream.error.playback] Playback may not work.

I125: ----------------------------------------

E105: PANIC: VERIFY bora\lib\vmdb\wqpool.c:750

The fact of missing sound wasn't too crucial for me, so I was just ignoring this. Then, the first freeze happened, and since that moment such freezes happen with these VMs on a regular basis, even when I'm leaving them running untouched (in front and active or minimized, with some apps running inside or without - doesn't matter). Or everything might freeze on the black screen after the Guest OS shutting down. In any event, I then have to manually ForceKill vmplayer.exe and vmware-vmx.exe processes from the Task Manager, or it will be stuck in that half-frozen state for-ever.

I have the back-ups of these VMs in their initial states (when I'd just installed the Guest OSs from scratch), so I deleted all my current VMs, downloaded the latest VMware-Player installer (it was the last at the moment), completely uninstalled my previous Workstation installation (using Revo Uninstaller and clearing any found leftover) and re-installed it anew, then re-opened the VMs from those clean back-ups (without additionally installing anything new inside)... No avail.

What else might be possibly important is that my VMs are located on an external USB 2.0 drive, which is connected to my laptop using a USB-hub. I don't have enough space on my laptop's internal SSD, as well as don't need my VMs to be very fast, so for me it's pretty much OK.

I have two different USB-hubs: USB 3.0 7-Port Hub TP-Link UH720 (connected to the USB 3.0 laptop port) and USB 2.0 3-port Hub Edimax EU-4230 (connected to the USB 2.0 laptop port) - connecting using either of them doesn't alter the situation. I also tried to change my main external USB-drive itself by another hard-disk in a USB 2.0 enclosure - to no avail as well.

One of the curious moments is that at the same time my WinXP VMs (32-bit SP0 and 64-bit SP2), with similar configurations (including the VMs location on that same external drive), do play sound properly to this day, and as for the freezes - I don't remember anything similar happening with these. Though, it would be fair to say that I don't use them as often and for as long as my Win7 and Win10 ones. However, all my VMs were created almost simultaneously.

Another moment is that I made an experiment:

- installed VirtualBox

- created exactly same Win7 and Win10 VBox VMs, putting them on my initial (main) external USB-drive (and leaving my VMware VMs on that second HDD in an external enclosure), with as similar configurations as possible

- connected both external USB-drives to the same USB-hub (UH720)

- ran Win10 WMvare and Win10 VirtualBox VMs simultaneously

- started exactly same actions within the VMs: both OSs were 1703 (Updated March 2017) and needed lots of updates, so I started updating them in the same way at the same time

Shortly (maybe not that much shortly, but still), WMvare Win10 froze, and VirtualBox Win10 keeps working without issues up till now (more than 24 hours have passed).

I even followed these guide to just in case uninstall the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) driver... No avail again.

So, how may I get rid of this VMplayer problem? Even under my conditions (such as VMs location on an external USB 2.0 drive), VMware works significantly faster than VirtualBox, but VirtualBox has no crashes.

Two Win10 logs are attached along with their respective dmps. You can also refer to the attached screenshot.

Regards,

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