Unity breaks in VMware Payer 3.1 after 1 week (repeatable)

[twfry]

Hello,

I have a repeatable problem with Unity and VMWare Player 3.1. If anyone has any ideas on how to correct the behavior below, I'd really appreciate it.

Host: Clean & fully updated install of Windows 7 x86

Guest: Clean & fully updated install of Windows XP x86

After installing VMWare Player, the guest is able to enter into Unity mode perfectly OK. Unity then works for about 1 week, both the guest and host can be rebooted and everything is fine.

Then after around 1 week, Unity mode breaks with the message: "The virtual machine cannot enter Unity mode: Check that Unity is supported for this guest operating system and that the latest version of VMware Tools is installed."

From there I can do 2 different things to VMWare Player to make Unity work again. 1) Run the VMWare Player installer and Uninstall / Reinstall the program 2) Run the installer and select repair.

After reinstalling VMWare Player, Unity mode will work again. Note: throughout this process nothing changes with the guest.

To me this is either a bug in VMWare Player, or some setting is getting set that the installer is able to later clear out.

Anyone have any ideas how to stop this. It is getting annoying having to keep running repair every week......

Thanks a ton,

Tom

[mdunn-vmware]

Hi Tom, that error about check that the guest is supported is the message we show when we can't determine why we couldn't start unity. Could you run Player and get the error message, then reply here and attach the UI log? Thanks!

[twfry]

Thank you much for following up on this.

Attached is the log file from one of the times entering unity mode failed last Friday. When unity works, it switches into unity mode within 1 or 2 seconds. When it does not work, typically the screen goes grayish for around 5 seconds and then the error message appreas. The log messages around time of the error are:

Aug 12 08:39:34.020: vcpu-0| VMXVmdb_LoadRawConfig: Loading raw config

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 3, unable to send an rpc.

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Reinitializing Channel 3(toolbox-dnd)

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| GuestMsg: Channel 3, Cannot unpost because the previous post is already completed

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| TOOLS unity.show.taskbar failed: failure of the transport layer

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 3 reinitialized.

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 3 reinitialized.

Aug 12 08:39:34.093: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 3 reinitialized.

Aug 12 08:39:35.953: vcpu-0| Setting thread 40 stack size to 1048576.

Aug 12 08:39:39.828: vcpu-0| TOOLS autoupgrade protocol version 0

Aug 12 08:39:39.828: vcpu-0| TOOLS ToolsCapabilityGuestTempDirectory received 0

Aug 12 08:39:39.831: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Reinitializing Channel 0(toolbox)

Aug 12 08:39:39.831: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 0 reinitialized.

Best,

Tom

[mdunn-vmware]

That was the VMX log, not the UI log. You can find the path to the UI log in the Help->About dialog. The error about unity.show.taskbar is not important; that's a Fusion feature that isn't in Player.

[twfry]

Hi, after another week as expected Unity mode broke again.

Attached is the UI log as requested. It shows 2 failed attempts towards the end of the log file, both look identical.

Please let me know if you require anything else to look at this. FYI, I just reinstalled VMWare Player, and unity mode is working again on the same guest/host, so I have no idea where to begin looking on this one....

Thanks again for your help!

Tom

[mdunn-vmware]

Thanks! That log confirms my suspicion, the UI was unable to set up the required connection to the VM that drives unity. I can't say why it would suddenly stop working after a week, though. Do you by chance have any mobile broadband software installed? One of the companies (Sprint I think) had software that would block that connection, and they've since released an update that fixes the problem.

[twfry]

Thanks for the feedback.

I do not think it is related to other software, because once I repair the VMWare Player installation, Unity works again with the exact same set of install software/services as before. If there was a program blocking Unity, that would always block, not just start blocking after a week. Right? Checked into your question and no mobile broadband is installed.

I think I figured out what is causing Unity to start failing.

About once a week Windows 7 reboots to update its software. It reboots when the guest OS is still running and I think it forces the shutdown too quickly. After that happens, Unity breaks on the next attempt.

Tested this 3 times and it seems to be the problem. If the guest is running, and I tell windows 7 to shutdown (or pull the power), then the next time the guest is loaded Unity will stop working. For the 3rd test I put the guest into hibernate while Unity was running, and on resume it didn't work either.

This seems to be a problem in VMWare Player itself. My guess is something or some status is getting set when Unity starts, and because of the forced shutdown Unity does not properly exit and that is blocking the next attempt to enter Unity. Again, reinstalling VMWare fixes the issue.

Does that make sense? It's my best guess.

So my solution is to be more careful about fully shutting down the guest (and not using hibernate) before the host OS goes down. (Which I should do anyway).

Hope this helps, please let me know if you have any ideas on how to continue exploring how to fix this.

Tom

[mdunn-vmware]

That is indeed strange... when Player is in this state, does unity work in any other VMs?

Also, if you wouldn't mind doing one more test, could you go into unity, and then kill the vmware-vmx.exe process using Task Manager. Then see if unity works for that VM afterwards.

Regarding gracefully shutting down VMs when the host shuts down, that is definitely something we want to improve in future versions of WS and Player.