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ItsBroke
Contributor
Contributor

Guest Video/DWM Crashing, Black Screen Flicker

I’ve been getting the flickering black screen issue that appears to be impacting several users of Workstation (Pro and Player). My first event was in November 2022, but it didn’t start crashing so frequently that the VM became useless until last week. It’s presenting as a crash of DWM.exe (Desktop Window Manager) and/or the guest video driver (SVGA 3D) per the Windows application log, with no corresponding entries on the host’s logs. My host and guest are Win10. The guest is pretty clean and does not have a network adapter, so this couldn’t have been a guest update that caused this.

 

Host Config:

Windows 10 21H2

i9-10900K CPU

32GB RAM

 

Guest allocation:

4 CPUs

8GB RAM

3GB Graphics Memory

Tools v.11.1.5.16724464

 

Here’s a list of posts with the same issue:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Problems-with-DWN-crashed-in-Windows-10-amp...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/DWM-fault-in-Windows-VMs/td-p/2931953

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Sudden-issues-across-multiple-VMs-flickerin...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/VMware-Workstation-16-Pro-Problems/m-p/2929...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Player/Display-Driver-Failed-to-Start-error/td-...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/Workstation-Tech-Preview/W10-VM-Chrome-Youtube-video-playback-cras...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Player/Black-screens-two-or-more-loop-times-whi...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/Horizon-Desktops-and-Apps/Intermittent-flashing-black-screen/td-p/...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/VMware-SVGA-3D-stopped-working/td-p/2930380

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/VMware-SVGA-3D-Video-Driver-Stopped-Working...

Most of these state that issues began around Oct/November 2022

 

I’ve tried all of the fixes that I could find and it still persists. The most success came from updating to Player 17 since the issue stopped for about 5 hours.

So far I’ve tried:

Reinstalling tools

Updating Player from v.16 to v.17

Uninstalling and reinstalling Workstation Player (v.17)

Running repair on the hypervisor

Updating my host video driver (1080ti)

Messing with resource allocation for the guest

Turning off 3D graphics acceleration

Set to single monitor mode, setting it to a fixed lower resolution

Manually extracted the Vmware guest video driver and installing that (SVGA 3D 8.17.01.001)

-How To: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2032184

 

Found the “Current Drivers on Windows Update (82290)” page that does list a newer version of WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) than what I have (https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/82290), the listed driver version is 8.17.02.0014. Page is dated November 2022 (potentially related?).

Checking the Windows Update Catalog, I didn’t see a Win10 driver update for that date.

 

Found that there’s a newer tools version (12.1.5.20735119), installed and checked the video driver version, it’s now 9.17.04.0002.

Did not fix the issue.

 

Hopefully Vmware is actually working on this…

 

7 Replies
m_anderson
Contributor
Contributor

I'm having similar issues without any success, starting around the same time frame. The frequency of DWM.exe crashing is inconsistent, but it can by 10+ times a minute at its worst.

 

Really hoping vmware provides a solution to this problem as its been around far too long now.

 

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rebom70
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same problems since end of September and not really a solution. It seems that VMWARE ignores it 😞

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rcosta98
Contributor
Contributor

Been having this same issue appear sporadically since about October. Tried every solution listed above, still no luck. At least I'm not the only one lol

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m_anderson
Contributor
Contributor

Here is an example of how frequent this issue is for me, it makes being productive extremely difficult.

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network123x
Contributor
Contributor

Same here. VM is mostly unuseable since october/november. See screenshot. No idea what to do.Workarounds didnt work. 

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SmartCookie
Contributor
Contributor

I've been researching this and here's what I have found:

1. VMWare Workstation has 2 modes of operation - default and under WHP (Windows Hypervisor Platform)

2. Disabling WHP had an effect of stabilizing my VM and the crashes stopped, but it was only until next reboot. They still ocurred after. WHP allows third-party hypervisors to run off of Windows APIs, at the cost of some guest performance and nested virtualization capabilities. Apparently, this is broken, -OR- (I haven't tested) needs also Hyper-V enabled.

3. I updated to VMWare Tools 12.1.5 - no effect. Updated to latest Windows cumulative update - no effect. Turned off all Aero effects from Advanced System Settings - no effect.

4. I ran 

 

 

sfc /scannow

 

 

in the guest OS, which found some corrupt files. This by itself did not solve the issue, but I had to try. It's good to fix those before continuing. At this step I downgraded VMWare tools to 12.1.0 again but that also didn't help.

5. I had Virtual Machine Platform - Enabled and HyperV - all disabled in 'Turn Windows features on or off'. VMP allows WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to run... By making the OS run virtually. Therefore, disabling only Windows Hypervisor Platform only would not have worked it seems, as VMWare is running inside a virtual container or conflicting with WSL, in a way, still attempting to use WHP. I may be completely wrong, this is not documented very well.

Why it worked for 1 reboot, I do not know, reboots by themselves did not fix anything, I had tried that too. Maybe it's a bug or omission from the devs that allowed it to run normally once. Disabling VMP too and rebooting today fixed it again. No DWM crashes.

IMO: The application HAS TO give more information on what mode it's working in and what it needs to do so in something like a small checkbox list.

TL;DR: Disable all Hyper-V, Windows Hypervisor Platform, Virtual Machine Platform in 'Turn Windows features on or off'. Reboot. Maybe twice, my machine did twice by itself. Try your VMs now, then drop a reply if that worked for you or not.

m_anderson
Contributor
Contributor

Unfortunately SmartCookie the above recommendations did not seem to alleviate my issues

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