Visual Studio 2010 crashes in Windows XP VM under Fusion

[derevan007]

I am running Windows XP SP3 under VMware Fusion 4.1.1. I recently installed Visual Studio 2010 and it would crash every time I tried to open a file in a project. I submitted the crash dump to Microsoft and they indicated that there was a problem with color management and that I needed to reset it to default. Sounded easy enough until I realized that the SVGA driver provided by VMware does not support color management (ie, no Color Management tab appears in the Advanced Display properties and the Color Control Panel applet does not work).

Does anyone know how to get VS 2010 to run on XP in VMware Fusion?

PS. In case the actual exception causing the crash might provide a clue, it is below:

System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException was unhandled
Message=Initialization of 'System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage' threw an exception.
Source=PresentationFramework
LineNumber=0
LinePosition=0
StackTrace:
at System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.RewrapException(Exception e, Uri baseUri)
at System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate.LoadTemplateXaml(XamlReader templateReader, XamlObjectWriter currentWriter)
at System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate.LoadTemplateXaml(XamlObjectWriter objectWriter)
at System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate.LoadOptimizedTemplateContent(DependencyObject container, IComponentConnector componentConnector, IStyleConnector styleConnector, List`1 affectedChildren, UncommonField`1 templatedNonFeChildrenField)
at System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate.LoadContent(DependencyObject container, List`1 affectedChildren)
at System.Windows.StyleHelper.ApplyTemplateContent(UncommonField`1 dataField, DependencyObject container, FrameworkElementFactory templateRoot, Int32 lastChildIndex, HybridDictionary childIndexFromChildID, FrameworkTemplate frameworkTemplate)
at System.Windows.FrameworkTemplate.ApplyTemplateContent(UncommonField`1 templateDataField, FrameworkElement container)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.ApplyTemplate()
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureCore(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.UIElement.Measure(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.Controls.Grid.MeasureCell(Int32 cell, Boolean forceInfinityV)
at System.Windows.Controls.Grid.MeasureCellsGroup(Int32 cellsHead, Size referenceSize, Boolean ignoreDesiredSizeU, Boolean forceInfinityV)
at System.Windows.Controls.Grid.MeasureOverride(Size constraint)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureCore(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.UIElement.Measure(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.ContextLayoutManager.UpdateLayout()
at System.Windows.ContextLayoutManager.UpdateLayoutCallback(Object arg)
at System.Windows.Media.MediaContext.InvokeOnRenderCallback.DoWork()
at System.Windows.Media.MediaContext.FireInvokeOnRenderCallbacks()...
...etc

[docgoku]

I'm running VS 2010 in Win7x64 VM without issue.  Sorry it's not an XP machine...but I was able to do that very config in previous versions of Fusion.

Does VS2010 only crash on project files or can you right click an .aspx/.php file and say open with VS2010... curious if it's somethign with your projects/local IIS vs. a color problem you mention.  It sounds like you can open VS2010...but just not the projects?

[derevan007]

Projects (solutions) open fine. It's when I try to open a file in the project; eg, cpp and hpp files. If I try to open the files directly (ie, not from project explorer) I have the same problem. Microsoft identified the problem as being with Color Management, and Windows 7 has native support for it, so understandable why the problem would not occur there. I believe the problem is with the VMware SVGA driver under Windows XP only.

[docgoku]

Two things that might apply.... when searching for something similar to your issue...

One person had a similar graphics/color issue in WCF 2010 and VS2010... There was this hot fix from ms.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/10/14/hotfixes-available-for-scrolling-context-men...

The real deal might be this from a similar issue with ESXi, much different that Fusion yes...but still a VMWare hypervisior...

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101170...

Looks like they remove the VMWare SVGA driver... update it with the default Win2008 server driver in this case from MS... I'd suggest doing the same with your windows XP install....

[derevan007]

Thanks for trying to help.

I applied the patches with no success.

I uninstalled the VMware SVGA driver (also tried running in safe mode), still with no success.

[docgoku]

Well... :smileyconfused:

If it makes you feel any better... I can't run Fusion at all with out rebooting the mac at least once when at home.... then change envrionments and be at work... always requires a 2nd reboot.

So, problems all around.