DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION when loading certain games

[MrAlLind]

I've tried to play Portal 1 & 2 and Overwatch 2 on my M1 MacBook with Windows 11 on the Tech Preview, and while I managed to get Portal 1 to work after a bit of tinkering I get a Blue Screen Of Death with DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION when I try to go beyond the menu in Portal 2 and a couple of seconds after the menu of Overwatch 2 loads (around when the 3D graphics would start to load). I've tried increasing cores, since that helped me when launching Portal 1, but no luck. VRAM is also set to max. Any ideas on what I can do to load the games?

[Technogeezer]

What are the graphics requirements for the game? The Tech Preview does not support DX12 or OpenGL.

There might not be anything you can do about it because a search on the error message indicates that this message gets thrown due to a long running deferred procedure call or the system spending too ,much time on at a high interrupt request level. It's an indication of a  driver issue, according to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/bug-check-0x133-dpc-watchdog-vio...

@Mikero can we have someone on the 3d driver team take a look at this - Microsoft's documentation indicates that this symptom could be a driver issue.

[MrAlLind]

Portal 2 uses DirectX 9 and Overwatch 2 uses DirectX 11, so they should be supported. 

[Technogeezer]

Then it's likely to be a bug in the beta. VMware will have to address it because all remedies that Microsoft and the web have for this error is to make sure drivers are up-to-date or "contact the vendor". 

You may also wish to reach out to the beta team directly by dropping an email with all applicable data to fusion-beta@vmware.com (the email address found in the Tech Preview Testing Guide).

[omgmyspleen]

Just to add to this in case it helps:  Red Alert 3 will give this same blue screen error if you have anti-aliasing enabled.  Every other setting can be maxed out and it'll run fantastic, but that one will make the VM die.  

[MrAlLind]

Thank you so much, Portal 2 works perfectly when turning off Anti-Aliasing. Unfortunately Overwatch 2 crashes before I have the chance to go into the settings and turning it off, because menu-background features a lot of 3D models. But thanks again, this was definitely the issue. Hopefully this will be fixed by the VMware team when the beta gets a full release

[Mikero]

Thanks for reporting this one!

I actually filed the original bug when I was crashing with Portal 2 and Overwatch 2 myself, but it seems that it's responsible for a number of related crashes.

The issue is in our driver and has been resolved internally, we're just going through testing.

I expect no crashes of this nature when we ship

[MrAlLind]

Awesome, thank you for clarifying what's actually going on, I was going insane trying to figure out if my VM was broken or not. You don't happen to know (or are allowed to say) when we could expect a full release or an update fixing this? 

[Technogeezer]

From what VMware has said, I would expect the official release sometime this fall. It's rare that they issue updates to a tech preview/beta.

I do wish that they'd issue a tech preview update so we can get a chance to test some of the missing Windows 11 ARM tools features (shared folders, printing) that they say will be in the official release.

[jyang2012]

No fix for this? I am getting the same issue on my W11 ARM VM operating on the Fusion 2023 Tech Preview with anything that has to do with any graphics acceleration. There seems to be something very very unstable with the VM Tools graphics drivers.

[Technogeezer]

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@jyang2012 wrote:

No fix for this? I am getting the same issue on my W11 ARM VM operating on the Fusion 2023 Tech Preview with anything that has to do with any graphics acceleration. There seems to be something very very unstable with the VM Tools graphics drivers.

You should have no expectation that fixes will be released for any issues found in this public beta software until the formal release of the next GA version of Fusion.

VMware is aware of some issues in their 3d driver for some workloads. I’d suggest dropping an email to fusion-beta@vmware.com with as much detailed information about where you are seeing this error. Don’t wait for the team to watch this forum if you want to make sure you get their attention. 

You might want to try to download VMware Tools 12.3.0 https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads/info/slug/datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_tools/... which appears to have a later date than the Tech preview and see if they fixed the issues there. Otherwise you’ll have to wait. .