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.

[chrisveitch]

Paul-Henri - did you try deleting VMWare Tools and reinstalling? The share was part of my problem but I think the VMWare Tools reinstall may be what really fixed it.

[phlampe]

Hello Chris !

Just tried it, thanks to your suggestion, but unfortunatly it didn't fix my problem. I opened up a ticket with VMWare's support, but I'm also checking Parallels Desktop just in case.

Paul-Henri

[JasonLP]

I am experiencing the same problem. Windows 7 will be running fine all morning, then when I return to it later in the afternoon, it becomes entirely unresponsive. Neither the Mac Activity Monitor nor the Windows Task Manager itself is showing anything particularly interesting.

This has happened at least once a day for the past few days. I can't be 100% certain if it happened before the 10.9.1 update.

Prior to now I've been shutting down Fusion and re-loading the VM, believing it was hung entirely. But this time I let it run for awhile, and 15 minutes later it seems to have worked itself out.

-Jason-

[phlampe]

@Jason: I think your issues looks more like the App Nap problem discussed earlier in this thread.

My case was solved thanks to VM Ware and Intego support: it was VirusBarrier 2013 (v 10.7.8) that was blocking access to my local files when VMWare was trying to access them through the shared folders. VMWare support was able to find out the wait states on the files, and the Virusbarrier process reponsible for them, and Intego responded very quickly with a v 10.7.9 that didn't block VM Ware. And btw, version X6 of Virusbarrier works fine.

Hope this helps,

Paul-Henri

[seani]

VMWare Fusion Version 6.0.2 (1398658) / Mavericks 10.9.2, Quad Core iMac i5 / 32Gb mem.

Full screen VMs lock in similar situations, a period of inactivity and the VM is frozen, and I must force stop / start to recover. Happens a least once a day, Win7 and Linux VMs. The VMs in question do nothing but host a VPN session.

Peformance is fine up to the point the VM is frozen. On this box, a force stop / restart or revert-to-snapshot doesn't take long to get going again, but really not good enough.

[AaronTorgerson]

I have a similar problem since the Mavericks update. I am running Windows 8.1 in Fusion 6, and I've noticed that when I use the Start Page search function (hit Window key and start typing), sometimes it will freeze the whole thing. Even the Virual Machine Manager becomes unresponsive. When this happens, explorer.exe jumps to the top of the list in Task Manager for CPU utilization. Really frustrating as many things are hidden from you in Windows 8.1 and are only available thru search.

[ThePimento]

Today has been extremely frustrating. It took 5 minutes to open IE, 5 minutes to open a new e-mail message, and now 6+ minutes to attach a document.

My Win7 side is unusable trying to do basic functions. Not to mention when I restart it literally takes 15+ minutes for it to restart where I can log in.

[michaelarice]

This has happened to me as well. I upgraded to Fusion 6 after upgrading to Mavericks. I created a new Win7 VM and it works fine, until the Mac goes to sleep for a while. It doesn't happen every time, but it's about 80% of the time. When the Mac wakes back up, the vmware-vmx process will be using 100% of the CPU, and the Win7 VM is completely unresponsive - as in I can't even move the mouse - I have to force shutdown the VM.

I'm running a MacBook Pro 15 Retina with 16GB memory. I've tried limiting the VM to 2GB memory and 1CPU, but that doesn't seem to help any.

Help, Help, Help!!! This has made VMWare completely unusable!

[seani]

Hi,

I posed the question to the @VMWareFusion twitter account, and have had a response that's worked for me for the last 48hrs or so.

1) In "Energy Saver", untick "Put hard disks to sleep when possible. This was the route I took and it's worked so far

-- OR --

2) If you've set your hard disks to sleep after a period, ensure that the VM also has it's own version of this set, but with a shorter period. This looks like an on or off setting on my iMac so I haven't tested it (and I don't want to change a setup that works)

Ta

S

[ThePimento]

Looks like 6.0.3 fixed this for me. I also log out of Windows (but keep it running) every day after work. I haven't experienced any more freezing issues since I updated.

[va9155]

I have this same issue with full screen apps performing fine but periodically being inaccessible from the console.  It appears to freeze up, but in fact the VM is running fine, just the console is unresponsive when I switch between full screen apps occasionally.  It acts like a bug in the full screen handoff communication with VMware tools.  I am running Fusion 6.0.4 and Mavericks 10.9.5.

I found a couple of work-arounds to get the desktop back without rebooting the host or vm :

• switch the vm's view to Single Window and back.  This can be done from the VMware toolbar (hover the mouse near the top of the screen) or by pressing control-command-F.  This is the easiest and safest way that works for me
• for Windows vm: remote desktop to it which "resets" the display and I can then access it locally again

I am not sure what the root cause is - I don't have hard disks going to sleep in Energy Saver, and the host machine and vms run fine before, during and after the incident.

I haven't tried Fusion 7, but may reinstall VMware tools to serif that fixes it.  Hope the workarounds help someone not lose data!

[Metrolabel]

Thanks!! man that took me so long and painful! I took the "hardrive sleep" off and now much better.

I have mavericks 10.9.5 with VMWare Fusion 5.0.5 this has been going for weeks now.

hwc.

[mrjerrynormandi]

my macpro freezes up too.  Does your macbook have a nvidia card ?  so far from the diagnostic report it looks like an issue with the fusion code clobering the nvidia driver code.. at least that's what it looks like so far with the 20 minutes I put into it.   virtual box appears to be ok but I like vmware.     If it's not fixed soon I may be forced to switch.

[Metrolabel]

Are you sure that you don't have the HD sleep on in the Energy Saver in System preferences. I too had the same issue for a couple weeks till I read some one's post and when I took the check off to not sleep. It was good again.

[mrjerrynormandi]

Yes.. definitely sure.  I have power  saving  disabled when on street power and only power saving is only enabled when on UPS power.

[Metrolabel]

Well...then I would disable it there too to try. I heard that if you have it on in your main OS and not on the Virtual it conflicts?

If it works keep it off and if not turn it on again and check the other postings since there may be a network sharing issue or some other.

Good Luck!

[mrjerrynormandi]

Thanks.

Next time I'll try the ctrl-option-f key combination to break out.    I  tried ctr-option-esc.. that didn't work.