Fusion 4.0.1 on 10.6.8, XP SP3 guest = freeze on resume (Disk related?)

[ewing47]

MBP 13" 2,7GHz i7 (2011)

8 GM RAM

OS 10.6.8 (10K549)

Windows XP SP3 guest - exisitng guest already running under 3.1.3. Guest has 2 virtual HDs. one 60GB with OS + apps. The other is 20GB (D: drive) which makes some company apps happy (they look for a 😧 drive) and holds some user data, e.g. I mapped the "My Documents" to a folder on that drive.

- Tried upgraded from 3.1.3 to 4.0.1 more than once.

- I allowed Fusion to (a) upgrade the XP guest; and I also tried doing with out that, so (b) no upgrading for greater compatibility.

- VMWare tools install fine.

- XP guest at that point runs fine.

- I "suspend" the guest

- I click "resume"

- Almost always, Fusion basically locks ups at this point. If it does happen the first time I click "resume", then it will shortly after 1 or a few "suspect-resume" cycles.

- I'm need to force quit Fusion

- Relaunching Fusion and trying to resume results in the same behavior, i.e. Fusion freeze.

At that point, Fusion has a caused system-wide problem with removable drives

- If I attach a FW drive or USB stick then don't mount

- If I launch Disk Utility, it just sits there for minutes on "Gather Disk Information"

- If I try to shutdown, I get the spinning wheel for minutes. Eventually I use a hard reset to get to restart the Mac.

After reboot, I can do the following:

- I can launch Fusion.

- I can resume the guest.

- I can then suspend the guest.

- Then when I click resume the Fusion freeze happens again, and I see the disk related issues again (FW and USB drives don't mount, and Disk Utility seems stuck).

- Again, if I try to shutdown, spinning wheel for ages...and I hard reset.

I check the Fusion logs, but there's nothing indicating where or what is causing the freeze.

I was able revert to 3.1.3, and rollback to the snapshot made before trying to upgrade to v4.0.1. (On a side note that was important, since the upgrade to v4.0.1 and associated VMWare Tools caused QuarkXpress v7 and v8 to throw fits with licensing, i.e. installation damaged with the need to relicense the apps. Were I to make the upgrade again, I'd perform a license transfer/deactivation of those apps *before* upgrading to v4.x.

[ewing47]

Tried to update again, but to v4.0.2 this time. Still getting the stall, but I can clarify the conditions under which it happened and I discovered that Fusion is freezing with a "Caught signal 15" error.

This time I did the following:

1. Take snapshot (and tranfer/deactivate licenses)

2. Uninstalled Fusion v3.1.3.

3. Mount v4.0.2 image, click Upgrade from v3

4. Accept copying of Fusion v4.0.2 to /Applications folder

5. Once Fusion launches, upgrade virtual machine

6. VMTools are installed.

At this point I can suspend and resume the VM without issue as long as Fusion is left open.

7. Leave VM in suspended state

8. Quit Fusion

9. Relaunch Fusion

10. Click "Resume"

11. Fusion freezes at this point.

12. Looking at vmware-vmfusion.log, it seems stuck at:

2011-10-05T20:47:06.433+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120:   /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual   Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx: Mounting virtual   machine paths on connection: /db/connection/#110/.

13. Force quit Fusion, and I get more lines, indicating "caught  signal 15". A lot depending on how long Fusion is left in the frozen  state.

(14. After closing the lid, the MBP doesn't wake. Hard reset to get it boot.)

Here's a chunk from the log, from where it appears Fusion is trying to resume.

2011-10-05T20:47:06.336+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120:  VMHSVMCbPower: /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware  Fusion/Virtual Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx,  Setting state of VM to resume with option soft
2011-10-05T20:47:06.336+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120:  /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual  Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx: VMHS: VM  /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual  Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx in directory  /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual  Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm
2011-10-05T20:47:06.336+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120:  /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual  Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx: VMHS: Exec()'ing  /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vmx.
2011-10-05T20:47:06.374+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120: OnVMStateChanged
2011-10-05T20:47:06.374+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120: SetAttached
2011-10-05T20:47:06.374+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120: OnSetAttachedCompleted
2011-10-05T20:47:06.433+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120:  /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual  Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx:  VMHSOnHostExecVMXSuccess: vmPath=/vm/#80af99c6ff5edc23/
2011-10-05T20:47:06.433+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120: VmdbAddConnection: cnxPath=/db/connection/#110/, cnxIx=1
2011-10-05T20:47:06.433+01:00| VMware Fusion| I120:  /Users/[my_home]/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual  Machines/Windows XP Pro.vmwarevm/Windows XP Pro.vmx: Mounting virtual  machine paths on connection: /db/connection/#110/.
2011-10-05T20:48:11.936+01:00| VMware Fusion| W110: Caught signal 15 -- pid 1828 (eip 0x7fff81723d62)
2011-10-05T20:48:11.936+01:00| vthread-5| I120: VTHREAD initialize thread 5 "vthread-5" pid 1828
2011-10-05T20:48:11.936+01:00| vthread-5| W110: Caught signal 15 -- pid 1828 (eip 0x7fff816e4932)
2011-10-05T20:48:11.936+01:00| VMware Fusion| W110: Caught signal 15 -- pid 1828 (eip 0x7fff81723d62)
2011-10-05T20:48:11.936+01:00| vthread-5| W110: Caught signal 15 -- pid 1828 (eip 0x7fff816e4932)
2011-10-05T20:48:11.936+01:00| VMware Fusion| W110: Caught signal 15 -- pid 1828 (eip 0x7fff81723d62)

The last two types of lines just keep repeating, until I force-quit fusion.

I googled and searched here for "caught signal 15" but didn't find much that could point me in the right direction. Anyone have an idea?

Message was edited by: ewing47 - fixed some typos.

[ewing47]

Following this problem up myself. It appears that the problem is only in 10.6.8; it's not occuring in Lion Server 10.7.1 (11B2118) -- although I'm using the same computer or even type of computers to test.

I did this:

0. Installed Fusion v4 on mac mini. (N.B. Fusion v3 was *never* installed on this Mac.)

1. Copied my current XP SP3 VM running properly under 3.1.3 on my MBP to a firewire drive. (VM was copied in a suspended state)

2. Mounted the FW drive on my mac mini server 2011 (2 Ghz Core i7, 8GB RAM)

3. Dragged and dropped the VM into the VM Library.

4. Resumed VM machine, with the option that I "moved" the VM.

5. Shutdown VM

6. Manually changed compatibility for Fusion v4 in the VM Settings, Compatibility

7. Stated VM

8. VMWare tools installed

9. Tested cycles of resume-suspend without issue

10. Quit and reopened VMWare

11. Test cycles of resume-suspend -- again no issue seen.

So it appears that I can upgrade my existing VM from Fusion v3 to v4 without issue in Lion Server, although not in 10.6.8. However the cavaets are that I tested with the different Mac models, and the Mac mini never had Fusion v3 on it.

Looks like I can keep my MBP running 10.6.8 on Fusion v3

I need Fusion on the Mac Mini server with Lion, and it appears that v4 will be o.k on this one. I created a new XP VM from scratch yesterday with Fusion v4 and haven't encountered any issues with that so far.

That said, I would like to figure out how to resolve the "Caught signal 15" error with Fusion v4 on 10.6.8.