Hello,
I have a problem which is making no sense to me. I have a whitebox server that I have been running ESXi on for a few years with no issues until now. I have 3x disks connected to the on-board ICH10 controller and no RAID setup.
First of all I upgraded form 4.1 -> 5.1 and booted up a Windows 7 VM only to see it freeze on boot up. After some goggling I read about some similar issues that may have been related and decided to try a downgrade to 5.0 update 2.
All of a sudden everything was working again all VMs were booting fine and everything looked rosy.
However after a day or so this freezing issue reared its ugly head again.
The weird part is my Linux and XP machines still run absolutely fine it is only Win 7 (tried a few different W7 VM’s) and also an SBS2011 VM that has this problem.
In the vSpheres event viewer I have seen a "lost connection to data store" errors but I do not seem to get these all the time. This made me initially think there could be something wrong with the disk but that does not make sense for two reasons one I get the same issue with VM's on other disks and two if I reboot the host my Windows 7 VM will boot up and work fine for a while but then randomly begin to freeze again until I reboot the host once again.
One thing I have noticed is that since the upgrade ESXi needs the on-board NIC whereas before I only had the driver for the NIC I purchase specifically because the on-board one was not support at the time - I have seen a known issue with failback or something when you have an unused NIC but I tried the workaround and turned failback off and this has not resolved the problem. But seeing as I am using DAS I am not too surprised about that one.
I have no reason to believe there is a hardware issue here either. Memtest86 passes and everything was working fine on 4.1 plus like I said after a host reboot it also works fine for maybe half hour or so but I soon run into this issue again.
Help!
disable Power managment and screen saver in Win 7,
Have this problem yesterday )))
Interesting will try that later today and report back post haste, thanks for that.
I disabled the windows power management service and ensured the screen saver was disabled it was looking good for a while but alas the problem reared its ugly head again after a few hours.
Any ideas? This thing is driving me nuts!
Please tell us what vNic type and vScsi Controller your Windows 7 VM is configured with. Also is the VM Tools and Hardware up to date ?
My vScsi Controller is LSI logic SAS and I have tried running the VM with the V5 tools installed and also with no tools installed and get the issue either way.
Check the vmware.log within the VM directory and see if any errors are being recorded. What version of the virtual hardware is your Windows 7 VM running at?
Also check vmkwarning.log and vmkernel.log on the ESXi host at the time of the freeze to see if any errors possibly correlate/occur at the same time as the issue.
The NIC is an Intel Pro/1000 and the VM HW version is at 8 - not going to get a chance to gather the logs until mid next week now
will add them soon as I can.
Did you check the windows event log for anything weird? There is probably a driver which is the issue and results in a crash.
Can you try creating a new Win 7 VM using the "VMware Paravirtual" scsi controller and the "VMXNET 3" network adapter with VM Tools updated and test. Is your Host up to date ?
So I have been scouring the logs and haven't found anything useful. The windows event log contained some warnings related to the USB drivers but this hasn't helped much my VM has no USB devices connected and I have tested with and without a USB controller and there is no difference. As for the host logs I have been searching through them too but nothing is jumping out at me.
However I have created a new Win7 VM with Paravirtual scsi controller and the VMXNET 3 network adapter (still running V5 update 2) and this is looking good. Its been running for half a day so far without skipping a beat.
While not ideal as I will have to rebuild a few VM's and I would prefer to know and understand the route cause of the issue this looks to be a solution but I will be monitoring for a few more days before I declare this as "fixed".
Thanks for all your help!
How are your Windows 7 VMs ?
Did the VM SCSI Controller and Network Adapter changes work or are you still experiencing issues ?
The VM SCSI Controller and Network Adapter changes worked. I have since also tried to build a fresh Win7 VM but with LSI Logic SAS controller and the E1000 NIC and this is also working fine - so it appears my issue is something to do with the upgrade itself be it either the VM hardware or tools so I guess probably a driver issue of some kind.
Good to know it is resolved for you. ![]()
