Fusion 12 Big Sur - Screen going black for a few seconds

[DIRIT]

While using windows 10 within VM Fusion 12 on Big Sur, screen goes black for a few seconds then will come back with a few flashes.  Sometimes requires some input in order to prompt this.   Almost like it has to redraw the screen.   Sometimes occurs in close succession sometimes can be quite a while.  When happening in close succession it becomes unusable.  This was created to seperate out my problem from that of the “flickering” problem also mentioned in this forum.  This problem does exhibit a flickering as it redraws from black and could be considered a flicker but realised the issue mentioned elsewhere is a constant monitor flicker rather than a flicker while redrawing.  Not sure redrawing is what it is doing but not sure how else to describe it.  I’ve seen this sort of thing occur when there is a memory leak but I have not confirmed that is the case.

[DIRIT]

Manually installed tools 11.2.1.  I'll let you know if it makes any change if not I might try an older version of tools as it seems to be display driver related.  After going in to device manager, my vm even said that Windows has shut down the driver because it was not working properly.

[DIRIT]

VMWare Tools - v11.2.1  no effect.

[pgeremia]

One thing I just tried may have helped, but I need to give it more time.

I upped the "Shared graphics memory" to "Recommended" which is 8192MB.

I have not seen a flicker or blank out since I have done that but I need to give it more time while I am actually working.

[Roubaix2]

I will give it a try

[pgeremia]

Nope the screen just blanked out again.  WHERE IS VMWARE!!!!

[robkersey]

On my virtual machine I did the following, but it has had no impact:

1. Disable HW Acceleration (Display Settings)
2. Disable HW acceleration in the apps I use most (Outlook/Teams/Chrome)

The screen still goes blank, particularly when using the three apps mentioned together at the same time. 

Pretty sure this related to the VMWare display adapter/driver and desktop window manager (DWM) restarting all the time.

See the following in event log:

Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.19041.508, time stamp: 0xcd97c98b
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.19041.662, time stamp: 0xec58f015
Exception code: 0x8898009b
Fault offset: 0x000000000010bd5c
Faulting process id: 0x794
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6e341a557eee2
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\dwm.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 27ae176c-1181-4388-b91c-66d9e3082faa
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

The Desktop Window Manager process has exited. (Process exit code: 0x8898009b, Restart count: 2, Primary display device ID: VMware SVGA 3D)

[robkersey]

@wila @scott28tt Do you guys know how we get this raised with VMWare to investigate?

[scott28tt]

Tagging @Mikero and @RickShu to see if they can help.

[SMITHJVM]

+1, having the exact issues described here.  Windows 10 Pro 20H2 guest, Fusion and VMWare tools updated to the latest I can.  The black screen phenomenon is maddening, really regret upgrading to Big Sur (which forced the update to Fusion 12).  Help.

[DIRIT]

***UPDATE***  The problem returns after a few days, which is by itself quite odd.

So I have been unsuccessful in getting my upgraded windows 10 VM to stop the described behaviour.  However, my new Windows 10 VM does work perfectly.  I thought my new VM might provide some more insight.  The only difference is that my new Win10 VM is UEFI rather than Legacy BIOS.

So I noticed that in my new Win10 VM, VM Tools exercises more control over scaling than in my previous VM.  Maybe there is an issue with windows allowing the VMtools to exercise that override or could be the difference between the UEFI vs Legacy BIOS.  

Again, may not be helpful but I could not stand it anymore and broke down and installed a new VM.  This one has no problems updating either.

[stefanovesa]

Hello,

I have the same issue with Big Sur/Fusion 12.10/Windows 10. Windows 10 uses UEFI. It occurs every time a sound is emitted from any application hosted by Windows 10, e.g. Teams, Skype and all video conferencing apps in general. Each time a sound pops, the screen becomes black, after some "blackouts, Windows goes to 800 x 600 resolution and logoff.

Regards

[DIRIT]

Worked great for a few days.  Then I had to post the post I am replying to.  Now it is slowly coming back.  Urgh! 😖

[DIRIT]

Very good description of this problem and more concise than I have previously been.  We seem to be a growing group.  Maybe VMWare will take notice?

[Roubaix2]

hope so

[DIRIT]

Okay.  Whilst not a fix.  The new Windows 10 VM is way more usable and not prone to what I would call "Screen blanking fits" and the complete failure of the driver.

[stefanovesa]

Hello,

problem seems solved for me updating Video Driver as suggested today from Windows Update:

Cheers

[robkersey]

Installing update now...

[robkersey]

Update installed and this driver seems to be far more stable, I'm still seeing a dwm kernel crash when using MS Teams.... but it's useable now and doesn't seem to be as regular. Completed a 30min meeting without being booted/logged out of windows.

[DIRIT]

I would say that the new driver makes it more stable but whenever there is sound put through, it seems to go into fits of blank screening.

[Tomasz1]

I have bee VMware Fusion player for years...

Now there is the luck of help and support is not doing visible changes to solve this bug...

I have never had a problem similar to this...

Now the luck of improvements has made me test Parallels and... NO PROBLEMS!

Parallels is working so smoothly. So I am afraid I will have to finish friendship with VMWare... Sorry...

Tomasz