VMWare Fusion 4 Black Screen on my Mac Pro

[alecliu]

Please help it is driving me carzy....

It looks like the guest WinXP is Running well, but just black screen. When I resize the window from full screen to window mode, I can see my desktop of WinXP. And I can see it on the Vitural Machine Library, with tiny screen.

Please help me out, thank you!

[dquintana]

Hello Alec, welcome to the forums,

Se that.

I removed and reinstalled VMware Tools on the Virtual Machine and it solved the problem with the display and startup issues. I'm not sure what might have happened to cause this problem in the first place, but wanted to follow up let you know the solution.

Try reinstalling the vmware tools and see if the problem was solved.

[alecliu]

I think may be I have not make myself clear. BLACK SCREEN at all, when I try to start up a guest vm. Not even the freah new one. How can I install VMware tools, in such saturation.

[gpierce1]

Seems quite a few people have this problem as do I. Have you found a solution?

[PKMousie]

I too am having precicely the same issue, and would love a solution.

[gpierce1]

I have tried turning off 3d accel in the graphics control menu when the machine was off thinking it may have to do with the display driver, but no luck. My Mac has 64GB of RAM an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card, and 2 x 2.93 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon processors. This should be more than enough horsepower. I am not all sure what is going. When I hit the pause button and the window minimizes I can see it is running. Strange. I wish I knew who to ask so that I can use my VMs again. Also, it does not seem to be dependent on the particular guest machine. Windows and linux machines all have the same problem.

[ewlin]

This seems to be a known issue for machines with 64 GB of RAM, although I have also seen it with my machine which has 48 GB of RAM.

See this previous thread ---

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1841392#1841392

I would hope there would be an official fix soon.

[gpierce1]

Thanks for the reply. Is there an official channel to inform the vmware developers about this problem?

Greg

[alecliu]

I update my vmware fusion from 3, so I have the guest OS WinXP. Use that tiny screen, and switch between full-screen , windows to have a peek of the screen, to enable the remote access. Then use the Remote Desktop Connection in my OSX to connect it. After I login, I install VNC server, and then change to use the VNC to login.

Finally, I can use the xp in some how.

[alecliu]

I am using 64GB memory too ...

[gpierce1]

It seems to be a known issue with computers running 64GB.

[PKMousie]

Yep, I'm running 64GB im my box as well. Oh well...

[moeff]

I have a black screen everytime when I boot up my Windows 7 (32bit) VM (no BootCamp) on my MBP (Core Duo 2,53GHz, 4GB). The VM was converted from Fusion 3.1.3 to 4.0.2. I have this issue since a week. In the meantime I tried the following:

• "normal" Startup -> black screen
• 3D acceleration truned on/off -> black screen
• Safe startup -> files loaded till CLASSPNP.SYS, after that black screen
• Reinstalled Fusion 4.0.2 -> black screen
• Reinstalled Fusion 3.1.3 -> black screen
• Copied the VM-folder on my Windows PC and started up the VM with VMware Player 4.0.0 -> black screen

Actually I have no more idea. Please help.

[billearl]

moeff wrote:

I have a black screen everytime when I boot up my Windows 7 (32bit) VM (no BootCamp) on my MBP (Core Duo 2,53GHz, 4GB). The VM was converted from Fusion 3.1.3 to 4.0.2.

This is probably not much help to you: I had the same problem with Windows 7 (32bit) in Fusion 4.0.2, except it would boot okay the second time, after a forced restart. I eventually uninstalled and reinstalled VMware Tools, and that fixed it.

[moeff]

The VM seems to me not in state to uninstall/install VMware tools (actually nothing happens, when I try to do it).

Directly after the Windows progress bar the screen turns black and nothing happens for hours (than I powered off the VM).

[rsnell1]

This is my reply to the memory thread mentioned above:

I have a Mac Pro with 64GB of memory in it and was having this issue. I am running 10.7.2 and 4.02.

To be clear, the issue I had was that if I power on a VM, the VM's console would be black. Even though the console was black, I could see that the VM was running and the display was updating through the thumbnail in the "Virtual Machine Library" window. If i resized the console window I could see the display for a second while it resized. This is not a VM tools related issue. If I create a new, blank VM and power it on, this happens. I won't even see it POST. I never see any display in the console window.

To resolve this issue I took some of the memory out. I started by removing half of it so I only had 32GB in there, and the problem went away. I then added back 16 more for a total of 48 and the problem is still gone. Since I only have 8GB modules I couldn't really go any higher than 48 to see if it would still work.

So, in my case at least, it definitely works if I have less than 64GB of memory installed. I tried it, and if put all the memory back in so I have 64 again, the problem comes back.

[billearl]

What I mean by "forced restart" is selecting the Virtual Machine >> Restart menu item. After a little while (less than a minute), it would restart properly (might take a couple attempts to restart properly - I forget), after which it's possible to uninstall & reinstall VMware Tools. This seems like a different problem than the original poster of this thread is having.

[gpierce1]

Do you know if a fix for 64GB computers is on its way?

[rsnell1]

I don't know. My VMware account team is coming in today and I plan to ask them.

[Bain]

I just got the Black Screen problem.

Here's my environment:

* I have been using Fusion since V1. I upgraded to Fusion 4.02 when it was releaed (not beta)  and have been using it every since. No problems. I am running OSX Snow Leopard Server on a Mac Pro Dual Quad Core, 32GB RAM, 16TB Disk configured as 10TB Raid 5 and 1TB JBOD. I have a number of VMs (Windows and Unix), 4 which I am currently using on a big SharePoint 2010 project  (Windows 2008 R2 Servers and 1 Winsdows 7 Pro Dev VM). VMs use 4-8GB RAM each - 4 VMs running concurrnetly.  It's been working well - without issue since I upgraded to Fusion 4.02.

Situation:

* Last night I suspended my VMs and shut down the OSX Server. 4h later I started it again, and tried to continum my VM Sessions. Black screen. I do this often and this is the first I've seen of this issue. Nothing abnormal has been happening. Lots of disk. Lots of Ram. Lots of power. Lots of VIdeo Ram. OSX is working well. No corruptions. Past VMs  (Windows and Non-Windows) also black except for couple, so it's not a Windows Issue. These (past) VMs have been dormant for a while, so it's nothing I've done operationally. Only 1 VM is running in Fusion 4 mode. The others are in Fusion 3 mode (Compatibility).

* Read all the posts I can find and none seem to have a solution that has worked, other than go back to Fusion 3 (or go to Parallels which I also have). I am in the process of downrading to Fusion 3 and reinstalling Fusion to see if that does it. This is very frustrating. Loosing key Dev time on a project that's behind. Why does VMWare not weigh in on this issue? I am using Fusion because it (was) rock solid and (had) good support.

Any guidance greatly appreciated.