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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMware 5.0.3 hanging on OSX 10.8.3 - MacBook Retina mid 2012 8GB Ram (SSD)

Is anyone experiencing hangs on VMware 5.0.3 ?

I was originally on OSX 10.8.2, VMware 5.0.1 (I could not use 5.0.2 because VMware crashed due to the Apple video update.)

I started my Mac this morning, opened VMware, started my Windows 7 VM full screen using 2 monitors (I did not start any other Mac apps.)

I started going through emails, I had been working for 15 minutes and was composing a response to an email in MS Outlook, clicked 'send' and then the Mac beachball appeared, and the VM became unresponsive.

I usually use the centre mouse button to open Mission control to return to the Mac Desktop, this would not work, nor would CTRL-UPARROW.

I tried CTRL-COMMAND-F ... this did not work at first, but after 10 minutes of trying it finally switched VMware to Window mode.

I opened Mac Activity Monitor, and saw that I had 3GB memory free, no swap was being used, and the CPU was at 15%

When I hovered the mouse over the VMware window it changed to a beachball.

I found that I could open other Mac apps (Safari, Mac Mail) and these were working OK - just VMware had locked up.

The VMware menus worked very slowly (they responded 2 minutes after clicking on an option) but I was able to grab Support information.

I need to get on with work, so I have uninstalled 5.0.3, and re-installed 5.0.1 .... so far 5.0.1 is working so I can get on with work, hoping it remains stable for the rest of my working day!

Any one else experiencing similar?

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Googled the "NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!"

And came across someone with the exact same problem, although this is posted a couple of years back.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2666366?threadID=2666366

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alan107
Contributor
Contributor

I am having this same issue. I have a brand new MacBook Retina 16GB ram, 768GB SSD with 10.8.3 and Fusion 5.0.3. I started with 5.0.2 I believe and then updated to 5.0.3. With 5.0.2 I had to turn off the video acceleration features to get it to work at all but in 5.0.3 I could enable it and see the areo display in Win7 just fine. However, it immediately started hanging for 10 to 30 seconds several times an hour. I also found that it would often be slow to respond to typing.

I don't use it that much and it hasn't crashed my system yet so I will try and make do until the next update.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Just to make sure, it's a Win7x64 guest, right?

Are you using Unity or single-window mode?  If Unity, try turning that off and just running in a single window.  I've been running Win7 guests for years without any graphics issues at all.

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have:

8 x Windows XP (32 bit) - in order to support different customer configurations.

1 x Debian Squeeze (64 bit) to support a couple of others

1 x Windows 7 (64 bit) - for my day to day work

I spend most of my time (8-16) hours a day in Windows 7 for my day to day work (emails, writing documents) and one of the Windows XP VM's for my current development.

I'll often switch back to OSX to play music in iTunes, and check my personal mail.

When a customer has a query, then I resume a Windows XP VM with their version of software, and then suspend again when I'm done.

I usually have 2-3 VM's running, but well within the memory and processing limits of the laptop - it all works lightening speed.

I've never had any problems like this in all the years I've been using VMware from Fusion 3 up to Fusion 5.0.1 .. except for the graphics issue with Fusion 5.0.2 when the Apple 10.8.2 update came out in November.

I stayed with 5.0.1 so that I could continue to keep Graphics acceleration switched on, until VMware support advised me that the graphics crash was fixed with OSX update 10.8.3.

It was all working fine until the evening I upgraded to 10.8.3, then my machine started hanging.

Before the upgrade, I shutdown all of the VM's.

On upgrading to OSX 10.8.3, and then 5.0.3, I set about ensuring all the VMware tools were up to date in all of the VM's.

I upgraded VMware tools by starting up 3 VM's, and then upgraded the tools in each one at a time (used the repair option)

Whilst the first VM was rebooting, I then moved onto the 2nd, and upgraded it.

Whilst the second was rebooting, I then moved onto the 3rd, and upgraded it.

When this batch were done, I suspened them all.

I then carried on like this for the others, in batches of three - some of the VM's had not been open for a week and also needed MS Windows updates too.

This was going quite well, until I got to about the 6th or 7th, and my machine completely froze up - it was going like lightening one minute, then completely froze up and I could not do anything - the iTunes song was still playing, but the keyboard and mouse were unresponsive and the VM I was in at the time was unresponsive and the clock in the task bar did not change.

I had to hard power off the machine after 20 minutes, check disks etc. but it all seemed fine so I carried on.

The next day, more freezes, and so it has continued - even with my normal routine of only having a couple open at a time.

On one occasion, I had only just started for the day, and it froze up simply sending emails from Windows 7.

I ran disk checks in all of the VM's - nothing reporting any problems.

When it got to the weekend, I decided to re-install OSX, the first time I migrated, had VMware issues, so the second time I erased and installed just VMware, and also Dropbox which has my software backed up. I also tried reverting to VMware 5.0.1 to see if that cured it ... no dice.

The third time, I erased and only installed VMware and nothing else.

Still clutching at straws here, but with Activity monitor running, I notice that my Virtual Memory (swap) size has grown to 2GB after resuming and suspending several VM's, and my free memory is drops to around 200MB - the usual memory level is 1GB free, and no Virtual memory in use.

I am not ruling out a hardware issue - it would be a very unfortunate and weird coincidence through, but not outside the bounds of possibility - I have run the Apple extensive hardware diagnostics for hours, and no issues were identified.

I'm hoping VMware support can make something of the logs I sent, It shows an NVIDIA Video issue at the exact time of the freeze each time:

NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x1f = Fifo: MMU Error

Google turned up some other posts with this error, and they suggested that switching off "Automatic Graphics Switching" fixed it for them, I tried this yesterday, and at first it seemed to resolve the issue, however a few hours later it happened again.

So I'm baffled ... it's either a software glitch, or a hardware glitch .. but that does not really help.

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dariusd
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi sncooper,

Here's a long shot: Try resetting the SMC.  I have a much-older MacBook Pro, which, for reasons known only to it, sometimes decides that it's not going to bother using its fans to cool the system.  The result is just like you describe: Random graphics hangs, with a bunch of NVDA log messages about "PBDMA error" and so forth, at which point I realize that the rear of the system is screaming hot and the fans are not running anymore (or are running so inaudibly slowly as to be making an insignificant contribution to cooling the system).  If I reset the SMC, I can hear that it starts using the fans again, and the system works relatively normally... for a while.  After some small number of days, it goes into the same state again and hangs while attempting to cook itself, and I have to reset the SMC again...

Hope this helps!

--

Darius

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Tried that already Smiley Happy

and PRAM reset too.

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have purposfully thrashed the machine rotten today, started stopped VM's fans running full, Virtual Memory at 3GB

No crashes, hangs or anything - it would normally have crashed 3 or 4 times by now with this punishment.

Also, no external monitor connected..... could be the special ingredient ... I'll thrash some more tomorrow.

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have now confirmed beyond any doubt that the machine only freezes up when connected to an external monitor (Apple LED Display) or a projector.

It has been fine all week whilst I have been working away in Europe, and I have really put the machine through it's paces.

I arrived home, plugged in, and after opening up 2 VM's it froze straight away.

I shutdown, did the same again three times ... same results.

Booted up without an external monitor connected, and it's been fine.

The OSX 10.8.3 update started all this, and going back to previous versions of VMware does not help.

Time for more logs Smiley Happy

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smaccabe
Contributor
Contributor

I'm eager to hear how this pans out for you.  I'm am on 10.8.3 and run different VM's (Win764b, XP, Linux) but primarily my Win 7.  On an earlier version of OSX and Fusion 5.0.1 I had great marriage. I could run 2 or 3 VM's and lots going on.  No issues.  I was impressed being new to the Mac world (Running MacBook Pro Retina, 16GB, 500SSD). 

Then I moved to Fusion 5.0.2 and immediately this problems started for me (days later I saw others with similar issues on the forum).  I rolled back to 5.0.1 and all was well again.  Then came the 10.8.3 update.  Since then I've seen my vmware-vmx cpu usage behave badly.  Always 25-35% CPU when I have a VM up. The Mac fan is usually humming when a VM is up. This wasn't the case before the 10.8.3 update, these processes appeared to run nicely with the CPU usage on the VM working the same. (hope that make sense).  Now the VM can be idle (2-6% CPU) via task manager (with "Show processes from all users" checked).   But my Mac still shows a hungry vmware-vmx process.  My Kernal_task can also be similarly hungry when I'm not doing anything on my Mac, but not always.  As I'm new to the Mac world I don't know if that makes sense but it doesn't equate for me.   


Note: I'm connected to 2 external monitors (one via thunderbolt to DVI and second via HDMI to DVI -both Dell Monitor's (different models)).  This wasn't an issue on 10.8.x (where x was 1 or 2 - I'm not sure) and 5.0.1.

I've not even tried 5.0.3 in fear of problems. Smiley Happy

So I do think there is a video issue component to this.  

I'm going to try what you've tested... Run the VM's when not connected to external monitors and see if my behavior improves.  This would almost ensure its a graphics issue.  

Look forward to any updates you might have!

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So, I had my appointment with the Apple store Genius.

They pulled their LED display from out back, plugged it into my MacBook Retina, and I set about demonstrating the issue.

My appointment was only 20 minutes, and I could not demonstrate it, however they let me continue whilst they served other customers.

After an hour, I was about to give up, when I noticed he had plugged the screen into a different port on the computer to the one I usually do.

We switched the cable over to the other port and rebooted.

10 minutes later the issue happened, much to my relief that I was able to demonstrate it.

Now, he told me that he had a similar issue a couple of days back, and it turned out to be the monitor cable, however we noticed that the second port was worn (the connector was not held in as well.)

The machine is only a few months old, so they replaced the whole motherboard (Logic board.)

I went home, the connector now fits in firmly, and I started using my machine normally ... it froze up again within an hour - I had just clicked 'send' on an email.

It seemed likely that maybe the monitor was at fault, so today I purchased a brand new 27" Thunderbolt display.

Guess what .... new logic board, new monitor, and it still happens.

(I might keep the monitor though - it's pretty amazing)

Apple had reset absolutely everything in store.

Going to try a competitors virtualisation software and see if I get the same issues - hoping this might give me a comparison.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

They are nice aren't they?

Just to make sure, you don't have gfxstatus or something similar installed that allows you to manipulate which graphics card and/or which resolution you're using, do you?

There's one thing that I'm not sure you've tried - a new VM....maybe there's something strange about the one you're using.  This definitely seems like a VERY strange occurance.

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So,

I finally gave up on this issue ... I've devoted over 140 hours of my time on this already.

I tried Parallels with the same VM images (it converted them) and did not get the 'freeze' issue - however they have a bug running full screen which is a show stopper for me.

I've taken a different approach:

1. Install Windows 7 under boot camp

2. Run VMware Player on the Windows 7 side, to run Windows XP, Debian Linux VM's

I've was able to run all the same VMware images with not too much work - I just let it re-install the VMware tools to the version VMware player wanted and I was good to go.

All working fine now, no crashes at all.

It's not the ideal solution, as I have to reboot to get my Mac Mail, and I can't run iTunes because I have used 5 instances up, and it counts Bootcamp as number 6.

The downtime has been a big issue for me, so my company are providing me with a laptop next week, so this will probably be my last update here.

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sncooper
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

One more thing - I also have an old 2008 Macbook Pro ...

I used Migration assistant to copy everything onto the 2008 Macbook Pro, and hooked it up to the Apple Display - it works fine too.

The issue seems to be isolated to the late 2012 Macbook Pro Retina running VMware with an external monitor.

Apple swapped out my logic board on the 2012 model (so new processor, memory etc.) so it is essentially a new machine - the only part remaining from the old machine is the SSD hard drive - and this has been formatted and re-insalled.

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smaccabe
Contributor
Contributor

Hi - Sorry took so long to reply.

I don't have GFX Status installed.  Just the normal multi desktop that Mac allows you to have...

There does seem to be some difference when I use my XP or Win8 VM's they don't seem to get so hungry as the Win7 VM.  So perhaps I will try a clean VM and test.  The other win7 images I have tried do exhibit the same behavior.

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monithor
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Another Retina User here. I was using v 5.0.3 on Mac OS X 10.8.2 and was getting constant crashes when starting applications that I assume were using Hardware-Acceleration under Windows 7 (e.g. Blender, Cinema 4D, Qt Application Demo).

Went back to 5.0.1 and haven't had a crash since. I am also running dual screen btw.

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ColoradoMarmot
Champion
Champion

Upgrade to 10.8.3.  Apple fixed the bugs causing this in there.

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