Windows 10 (64-bit) guest freezes after startup (Fusion 11.5.1; Catalina 10.15.3)

[gremlinwerk]

I upgraded my Windows 7 virtual machine to the 32-bit Windows 10; it worked OK for a few days, then started to freeze immediately after booting up.

So I created a new VM and did a clean install of Win10 (64-bit) from an iso file. Same deal.

Reinstalling VMWare Tools has no effect. It seems to start installing (i.e., the "Cancel VMWare Tools Installation" option in Fusion is greyed out), but then just hangs like that for an hour or more at a time.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Here are some hardware and software details:

macOS Catalina Version 10.15.3

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2013)

Processor 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7

Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

Running Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac Version 8.1.4.3

VMWare Fusion Version 11.5.1

Windows 10, 32-bit (Build 18363)

Memory 2048 MB, 2 cores

[ColoradoMarmot]

The problem is that Windows 10 also wants at least 2GB and 2 cores to perform properly.  Windows 7 had much lighter minimum requirements.

For good performance, you need to have no more than N-1 physical cores assigned to any individual VM.  In this case, that would be 1 max for the VM, but Win10 doesn't work well (or at all in some cases) with less than 2.  You can (and I do) run 2 core VM's on a 2-core machine, but you may find that both the host and and guest stutter - assuming you have sufficient RAM.

And I suspect that's the real issue here: OSX itself needs at least 2GB free, which leaves none for the guest, short of massive amounts of swapping to disk.

Unfortunately, the only likely solution is to upgrade your machine.

[wila]

Hi,

Agreed with dlhotka.

One additional thing to look out though is that your host antivirus might be causing additional headaches.

Did you exclude the VM folder(s) from the antivirus?

Have you tried running without antivirus (not just disable, but uninstall) to see if that helps.

Recent versions of Windows might also depend on hypervisor functionalities within the guest.

On a processor from 2013 I would make sure that those are not running,

eg. no virtualisation based security (VBS) and credential guard (CG)

If you do require those options then make sure the VM has enabled the settings required for those options.

--

Wil