VMWare Fusion 6 freezes up after Mavericks update

[igorbastrikov]

I'm wondering if I'm the only one with this problem:

I mainly use Windows for Solidworks 2013 and I'm not sure if this is tied to the Mavericks update, but this never happened before. The VM just freezes up and there is nothing you can do — the machine doesn't suspend or shut down or anything, the only way to turn it off is to force quit VMWare. After I do that, I have to restart my MacBook, otherwise the Virtual Machine will not start up.

I've tried reinstalling VMWare, I've tried reinstalling Windows and Solidworks, nothing helps. By the way this happens in both of the VMs I tried - Windows 7 and Windows 8. I'm sure it's not a problem with Solidworks or Windows though because those worked totally fine before. Unfortunately I don't use windows for anything else to tell any more information about the freeze ups.

[BaronBongo]

I've just done an EFI update to my Macbook Pro and I'm getting the same result, though I'm using VMWare Fusion 5.0.3

Each time I try to resume a VM, the whole app just freezes. There's doesn't seem to be anything useful in the logs to indicate what's going wrong, just that it's saved a Hang Report.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Does this occur in Fusion 6?

[BaronBongo]

Not sure what you're asking there dljota. The original post was about Fusion 6.

[plaskin]

I'm using Fusion 6.0.1 (1331545) with Mavericks 10.9.  If I am running one Linux VM I will get a complete freeze of the VM, Fusion and Mavericks. The only way out is to reboot the Mac.  Of course, this usually happens when I'm demoing our software to a customer via Go2Meeting. The cool part is that G2M audio continues to work so I can tell our clients to keep calm and don't panic.

No idea what is causing it except Fusion is definitely involved. I've had this happen during 2 or 3 meetings now. I may need to start using a software hypervisor known for parallel lines.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Sorry - reply to the Fusion 5 post later in the thread.

It almost sounds like the host is getting starved for resources.

[plaskin]

Highly unlikely host is getting starved. It is fed with 16G RAM, a CPU that flys in great leaps and bounds and an SSD that contains empty bits everywhere except where they are full. No.. host isn't hungry. A memory leak is my guess.

[tylerabell]

It's App Nap. Developers have the ability to control it if they choose to, but most haven't done anything with it yet because it's so new.

If you have an issue with it, find the application in /Applications, (right click "get info") and check "prevent app nap".

[igorbastrikov]

Tried that, no luck

[tylerabell]

http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2013/10/vmware-fusion-6-and-os-x-mavericks-the-perfect-combo.html

[tylerabell]

Apparently, support is suppose to help us...

[rykelley]

Has support fixed this issue for anybody? i'm having the same issue. had to give up and go back to parallels

[djcardinal]

Same exact situation happened to me.  I also have a 16GB Mac Book Pro (Retina) and I do notice the memory is going really fast.  For instance, I am running only one VM, and I only have 103MB of Phys memory Free.

Something very odd, and it only started happening after I applied the Mavericks app.

VMware is using 300% of the CPU.

So I think something is up with VMWare Fusion as no other apps have issues.

DJ

[cfrolik]

This issue occurs regularly for me; usually, at least once per day. I have to Force Quit VMWare and then reboot the Mac to workaround the issue.

OS X Mavericks 10.9 running on a Mac Mini 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB RAM

VMWare Fusion Professional 6.0.2 running Windows 8.1 on Boot Camp partition

[ThePimento]

Same here. I'm running VMWare Fusion 6.0.2 on an iMac (2.7Ghz i5, 16GB RAM) running 10.9. It happens probably once a day where VMWare will freeze and I can't do anything. About 2-3 minutes later it will unfreeze like nothing ever happened. This is really annoying! I've done everything suggested above (turn off power nap, etc).

[mtairs]

Same problem here!!! Running VM with Win7 and experiencing extremely poor performance. VM takes >5mins to start up and is then unusable once it does start and just freezes.
Win7 Virtual machine is a base Windows install with only 1 application installed - MS Project.
Running VMWare Fusion on MacBook Pro (Late 2011) running Mavericks OS. Have tried increasing the memory allocation to the VM with no improvement.

Very disappointed with product since paying for this upgrade to work with Mavericks.

[mikl730]

I'm having the same issues. Newest MACBOOK Air, VMWARE keeps freezing up and requires force close. Seems to happen after standby on the MAC.

[chrisveitch]

I have the same scenario - upgrade to Mavericks, VMWare 6.0.2 and Windows 7 with a very basic install. I've raised a support ticket and have provided debug information to VMWare. The only progress I've had is that in debug mode it was even slower than ever, but after switching debug off Windows did manage to restart properly a couple of times. It's now back to the usual long waits and hangs (even opening Control Panel hangs for minutes) and it now won't install Windows updates correctly. I'm not happy.

I'm waiting to see what Support come back with - I'll update this thread when I get a response from them.

[chrisveitch]

After a few false starts with VMWare support they've got me going again. They examined my diagnostics and told me there was a READ/WRITE delay, although they couldn't say what it was on. They suggested disabling sharing which I did, and this seemed to solve the problem. I'd also just removed and reinstalled VMWare Tools so this may have had a part to play. I restarted sharing and gradually introduced both my local and network shares back and everything works OK.

[phlampe]

Thanks for the hint, Chrisveitch: it helped me at least to get my XP VM to startup and be a minimum usable.

But it's a real pain: disabling the shares means I cannot use files stored on my Mac disk from my XP VM. I tried working around it by sharing my main Mac folder on the Mac side, but it's half functionnal. The XP VM looses the connection regularly and I have to refresh it manually in order to be able to access my files again, and for example, Excel (Windows) is unable to save a 300K file through the network share without an error.

My config: VMWare Fusion 6.0.2 running a Windows XP VM, on my Mac Pro 2008 running Mac OS X 10.9.

I hope VMWare corrects this very very fast.

Paul-Henri