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madjack
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DISK/CDROM Timeout Issue Hangs Guest

About once a week, my XP Pro 32-bit VMware 4GB guest running on quad core Vista 64-bit 8GB host essentially hangs. It's not really hung, as mouse events are processed, the display is updated, etc. But try to run an app or even issue a shutdown and you get no success. For about an hour, I've seen lines like these being written to the vmware.log:

Jul 18 11:23:00.725: vmx| DISK: DISK/CDROM timeout of 1.086 seconds on ide0:0 (ok)

Jul 18 11:23:03.157: vmx| DISK: DISK/CDROM timeout of 1.143 seconds on ide0:0 (ok)

Jul 18 11:23:05.441: vmx| DISK: DISK/CDROM timeout of 1.065 seconds on ide0:0 (ok)

Jul 18 11:23:10.501: vmx| DISK: DISK/CDROM timeout of 1.392 seconds on ide0:0 (ok)

Jul 18 11:23:11.721: vmx| DISK: DISK/CDROM timeout of 1.003 seconds on ide0:0 (ok)

I am finally able to issue a shutdown command, but it takes 20 minutes to finally execute.

I've been reading through the threads in the VMware communities about this issue, and see others have experienced similar problems. However, I haven't found a definitive answer to my problem. My apologies if the fix is obvious and posted somewhere.

Is there a solution to this? I'm running VMware Workstation 6.0.4 build-93067.

Thanks in advance.

jack

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Peter_vm
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Try to disable VMware Server memory optimizations:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

On Vista

C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"

guest ".vmx" file

sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"

mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

MemTrimRate = "0"

MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"

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Peter_vm
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So if you remove virtual CD-ROM device from your guest configuration, does situation improve?

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madjack
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So if you remove virtual CD-ROM device from your guest configuration, does situation improve?

As a matter of fact, I did try this, but without effect. I notice my hard disk light was on constantly. Also, I opened the host Resource Monitor from task Manager and found thatVMware was continuously writing to the hard drive, partly for logging and (as I recall) it was writing to a vmem file.

This VMware defect is so tenacious, even after the logoff has occurred on the guest during shutdown, VMware is still writing to the hard disk. The VMware workstation guest screen just goes black and 15 or 20 minutes later VMware finally gives up the ghost and permits the shutdown. While this isn't a showstopper, it is very annoying and knocks about an 1.5 hours off my productivity every week. (I've wondered if the host is causing any of this, but switching to the host I find no performance slowdown, except that resulting from VMware hogging the drive to do so many writes.)

Thank you for responding.

Jack

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Peter_vm
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Please attach whole "vmware.log".

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madjack
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Attached is my log file, wrapped in a Zip archive.

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Peter_vm
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Try to disable VMware Server memory optimizations:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

On Vista

C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"

guest ".vmx" file

sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"

mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

MemTrimRate = "0"

MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"

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madjack
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I'll give that a try. Since the problem only happens once a week or so, I won't know if this fixes the problem for awhile.

Thanks Peter.

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madjack
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Day 1 Results: I changed the config.ini file as Pater_vm suggested and experienced no hangs during run-time. However, the shutdown is has now taken 45 minutes and counting.

(BTW, what else should be in config.ini file? Mine was empty until I added Peter's suggested changes.)

See the attached screenshots showing VMware's really long writing to .vmem effort. (The first line in VMware Shutdown Issue.jpg shows writing to the .vmem file. Sorry for the grid cutting off the .vmem extension.) VMware is only freeing up about 0.02GB of memory every 2 or 3 minutes.

Thanks for your continuing help Peter.

Jack

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Peter_vm
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Sorry, what do you want to say by showing those graphs?

29MB per minute is not much, is it?

There were some reports about long shutdown, I would need to search, I have never experienced those.

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madjack
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Peter,

Sorry; I was showing in these graphs that 45 minutes after issuing the shutdown command, VMware was still writing to the .vmem file and at a peak of only 29MB/min. When I came in this morning, shutdown still hadn't completed.

If it's not one thing, it's another ... sigh.

Jack

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madjack
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I added the settings to config.ini as advised:

Try to disable VMware Server memory optimizations:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

On Vista

C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"

guest ".vmx" file

sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"

mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

MemTrimRate = "0"

MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"

However, the settings appear to have had no effect. I'm sitting here with my Windows XP Pro Guest virtually unusable as VMware's constant writing to the .vmem file seems to have consumed all of its attention. In other words, the problem I reported initially in this thread is still occurring.

If I can't find a solution to this problem soon, I'll have to find another virtualization solution or abandon the approach altogether and go back to running all my apps on the host.

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madjack
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Peter,

I double checked my settings after setting them as you recommended because the fix did not seem to work. Turned out I had a typo in my transcription. I corrected it and it's been weeks since I last experienced the problem I reported.

Thanks! (I hope 6.5 doesn't have the same issue - or at least it will be fixed with the same workaround!)

Jack

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