VMware Communities
supdood
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare Workstation Pro crashing host?

Starting in the beginning of March, I’ve been experiencing frequent crashes on my PC while running VMware. It’s been working fine for over a year and I don’t update anything so I’m not sure what’s causing the issue, maybe some stealth windows update?

At first it started off as a random freeze and reboot. I’ve tried updating to workstation 16, and now I get BSODs with the error message NMI Hardware Failure. Sometimes the BSOD mentions vmx86.sys

Anyone else with the same issues or know what’s causing it? Windows 10 Pro

Thank you!

24 Replies
RaSystemlord
Expert
Expert

@Chuckle123 

Your answer includes several argumentation fallacies. Those include, but are not limited to Appeal to ridicule, Courtier's reply and Poisoning the Well. It is not possible to give a relevant answer to an irrelevant comment - you need to write something sensible if you want an answer.

Tags (1)
Reply
0 Kudos
wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

Please can keep the debate technical and about the problems that people are facing.
No need to get personal here, it doesn't help, at all.

As has been mentioned before this is a user forum where users help other users. Sometimes there are people working for VMware here, sometimes not (I don't work for them either, I got my moderator credentials for eating cheese 😉 )

A few notes... it _is_ possible to get support for VMware Player when you buy it you get -by default- 30 days complimentary support. (see below)

wila_0-1634332637475.png

You can buy more support if needed.

What one would need in order to analyze a crash to start with is log files (haven't seen ANY) and crash dump files (missing in action too).
Beyond that.. it is mostly guessing as to what might have happened and asking questions in order to try and rule things out is not wrong.

I believe that there are crashes, don't really believe that it is "windows 10 at fault", it's not impossible, just unlikely. It is much more likely something to do with graphics drivers, possibly in a combination of the graphics stack in VMware.

But all is conjecture at this stage as there are way too many questions unanswered (or not even asked).

--
Wil

 

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
RaSystemlord
Expert
Expert

What Wila writes is exactly true. My post in question was 2 months ago (!) . I haven't seen any development on this Player Forum.

When dealing with technical matters, there are several possibilities.

1.
VMware deals with them as professional support. I described above, how that could proceed in professional world. Usually, this is limited to official support, which, as Wila mentioned, is not freeware. With commercial software, the idea is that you pay for it.

However, I'm not linked to VMware in any way and thus I'm not writing on their behalf. They can explain there workflow here better if they wish. In 2 months they haven't.

2.
Using Community to solve a problem. Given the matter, it felt that this might not work. That's what I said 2 months ago - that was my prediction. Thus Item 1  workflow was explained. I have no idea, if VMware has acted upon this or not. As discussed, this is Community, not VMware company.

In non-professional software analysis, it is often confused what is the cure and what is the underlaying reason. For instance, a new display driver might be the solution. The underlaying reason might be a bug in graphics adapter hardware, which is corrected by the driver.

Having said that, there IS some new development that is possible to express here:

a) I have tested Windows 11 quite a lot in VMware. It does not get the Guest and Host stuck. However, my tests have not been stress tests. Perhaps somebody might want to test this? 

In comparison, in my system, Windows 10 Guest gets stuck very easily. When preparing ISO for Win 11, which involves long network activity and intensive packaging of the ISO, it almost surely gets stuck. There is no intense screen activity going on, only screen power saving (which is one far-fetched possibility). Other than that, I'm running Win 10 in a clean install with basically Microsoft defaults. 

b) VMware announced a new version 6.2 a couple of days ago.

Perhaps that gives a solution this problem? Anybody want to test that?

3. As it may not be obvious to everyone, why separating underlaying reason and the fix is important, a few reasons for this. This is a technical forum and thus a limited, negative-attitude end user perspective, needs to be discouraged. The matters in this item are not always relevant, but in this case, when the problem has been unanswered for months, this is probably rather important.

a) Sometimes, you can change the underlaying reasons and then the fix is not needed. Sometimes, you need to correct the matter as soon as possible and you don't want to wait for a fix. If you cannot change the underlaying reasons it's OK, but consider that as your own limitation in a case where changing them is technically easy and affordable.
b) If you create a fix, but do not understand the underlaying reason, the bug may reappear and you are no wiser about it. Thus in professional analyze, you always try to find the underlaying reason as well, not just provide a fix. This is of course something that VMware does, Community means for this are always limited.

c) MOST importantly, this IS a Forum, not your personal bug fixer. You can pay for that service, just sign-in for Maintenance contract. There are many people reading these posts. While, from your own limited perspective, you do not need anything else than a quick fix, there are always others, who can benefit from an answer which has a wider scope for the matter.

Reply
0 Kudos
e2489
Contributor
Contributor

Just a quick update, Windows 11 appears to solve this problem. I've been using it since November, and haven't had a VM-related crash since then. Buggy as hell otherwise, but for those that rely on VMs, at least this is fixed. Hopefully it doesn't show up again, because VMWare certainly doesn't seem to care.

Reply
0 Kudos
RaSystemlord
Expert
Expert

@e2489 

Thanks for the confirmation on Win 11. As stated before, I never saw a problem with that. Neither with any of the Linux VMs.

How about the latest VMware version 6.2 - does that help?

I was just about to open a new thread and ask if this has been corrected, but I guess that is in vain. Now I need to use Windows Host or VirtualBox VM - both options I hate to do. Well, since there is another problem, supposedly Linux related problem, of not being able to run VMs from NTFS-filesystem, I guess it's easier to use Windows Host (in my particular case, where transfer of VM systems is a must). This NTFS-thingy, is another thing, which may or may not be corrected with the latest Linux kernel - haven't checked.

Reply
0 Kudos