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mrtharp313
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View 3.1.2 Agent killed my Base VMs

My upgraded my base VMs with the new View Agent 3.1.2 (from 3.1.1) and let them reboot. After reboot, I tried to log into the VM and befor the desktop was loaded, I was logged off and sent back to the ctrl-alt-delete screen

I even tried booting up in Safe Mode and the same thing happened. Tried with a domain acocunt and the local admin account and no change. Got real creative and did a remote registry to remove the VM tools from the start up & disabled the VM services and still nothing worked. RDP and Dameware'ing to the VM didn't help either.

I had to get my storage guys to revert the whole volume to last nights snap shot. Luckily I'm not in production yet so I didn't lose much.

Any thoughts why this happened? The only change was the View Agent 3.1.2 upgrade.

I've upgraded my 2 connection servers to 3.1.2 but have not seen an issue yet.

ESX 3.5 update 4, Win XP SP3 Clients, VC 2.5, Composer 1.1.0

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rpmello
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The reason this happens is because the 3.1.2 agent can mess up the userinit entry. If you use remote registry editor (in regedit, click File, Connect Network Registry) you can go to the userinit item and you'll find that it's probably missing a comma. Mine looked like C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Agent\bin\wssm.exe"

Add a comma between those 2 and you can login again

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Linjo
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Not heard of the issue, please file a support-request with VMware and post the SR number here so we can follow the progress.

Best regards,

Linjo

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Best regards, Linjo Please follow me on twitter: @viewgeek If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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patten_aaron
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Only time I have seen this specific issue is after running sysprep on a VM and trying to log in before it completes. However, given your troubleshooting steps, it doesn't sound like the issue you experienced. The 3.1.2 agent makes some changes to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit key, I suppose it's possible the registry got corrupted or something funky like that.

I'd be interested to know if it happens again if you upgrade the agent. Might want to take a VM shapshot first Smiley Happy If it does crater again, use the service console or remote registry to look at the Userinit key and see if it has anything other than "C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe," If it does, change it back to the default (which is "C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe," and that includes the trailing comma) and see if you are able to log in.

~Aaron Patten

Please award points for helpful answers. I got kids to feed

~Aaron Patten Please award points for helpful answers. I got kids to feed 🙂
rpfannku
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The same thing happened to us. Did you get a chance to open a ticket? I found that install the 3.1.1 agent worked.

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mrtharp313
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No I have not had a chance to open a ticket. This incident has forced me to redo a lot thus taking all of my time. I rolled everything back to 3.1.2. Once I get "time", I was going to try the suggestions made by patten.

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rpmello
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The reason this happens is because the 3.1.2 agent can mess up the userinit entry. If you use remote registry editor (in regedit, click File, Connect Network Registry) you can go to the userinit item and you'll find that it's probably missing a comma. Mine looked like C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Agent\bin\wssm.exe"

Add a comma between those 2 and you can login again

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mrtharp313
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That was it. The damn comma was missing.

Sorry it's been awhile but hell actually froze over and I had a lot of other commitments. I was playing with the View v4 agent to fix other issues and it happened again.

So thanks for the comma find and Thanks Patton for the original path to take!

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nmorisod
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Hello,

I got the same kind of issue with View 4. but when the linked clone are done .. (in error) i can't login into it, and remote registry in HKLM give me error while opening key (but HK users is working)

any idea ?

Nico

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mrtharp313
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You're saying you have the error trying to log into a linked clone or back on your gold image?

I've never seen that issue on a linked clone, so that wouldnt make sense unless there is still a problem with the gold image.

The last View specialist that I talked to about this, suggested the problem in View 3 lies with upgrading teh agent instead of a clean install of it.

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