I have another thread going regarding the persistent locks ups of a Win7 guest VM, but this is slightly different, hence separate thread.
Due to my other lock up problem I figured maybe upgrading from Workstation 7.1.0 to 7.1.3 might help. Heck, I'm running out of ideas so why not? So I installed 7.1.3 and then of course when I run any VM from that point I get prompted to update VMware tools. So I do this on my problematic Win 7 guest and what do you know? Right at the end of the 7.1.3 tools installer it locks up!
So I figure, I guess it's just another lock up of that same problem VM, but not so. On another physical host I update a different Win 7 guest and I get the exact same lock up at the end of the 7.1.3 tools installation.
Now I know I have bad luck with computers, but how can I hit the same exact lock up (right at the end of the 7.1.3 tools install) on two different physical hosts with two different Win 7 guests within minutes of each other unless there is in fact a real problem somewhere with this 7.1.3 tools installer?
Just for laughs I tried a 3rd Win 7 guest and even a 4th.
The 3rd guest behaved slightly different; instead of the whole VM locking up the installer wizard said "Not responding", but then pretty quickly everything in the VM flicked over to "Not responding" and then the whole thing was locked up. So after 3 from 3 lock-ups I'm thinking this problem is a dead set problem and that VMware QA must have been sleeping during ship week, but hold on doth thine eyes deceive me? The 4th Win7 guest VM that I updated DID NOT lock up. What the? Maybe VMware QA haven't been sleeping on the job after all. So what do I have on all those other 3 VMs that I do not have on the 4th?
- Well I do have A/V software on the 4th, so that's not it.
- It's a VM I haven't used in a little while so it isn't using all the latest Win 7 updates (Windows update claims 17 important updates are available; could it be one of those?).
- Also I have MS Office 2010 on the other 3 Win 7 guest VMs, but not on the 4th. Could it be MS Office 2010?
- The VM that didn't lock up is the only one with just 1Gb of RAM assigned. The others have 2Gb, 2Gb and 3Gb assigned. Could it be the amount of RAM? Is this even a logical thought?
- The VM that didn't lock up has 2 cores assigned (the other three have only 1; something I thought was supposed to reduce the chances of lock ups, which is why the others I use more often only have 1 assigned). Do I need to go back to 2 (or more) cores per VM?
- The VM that didn't lock up is the only one with memory page trimming not disabled. Do I need to re-enable that on my other VMs? (I'm keen to avoid RAM being swapped to disk, but if its causing lock ups I'll take the performance hit any day of the week).
Well, I guess even without a response from someone I have things to try, but I also now need to find some settings combination that avoids the other lock-up issue I am currently running into too. If only I could spend time doing my real work, and not messing around trying to solve VMware issues. :smileycry:
I can't help but think that if it's this hard to get a stable set up with VMware that there must be some underlying problem with the software. I don't ever recall having problems like this with Virtual PC. Sure VMware is a cut above M$'s offering in terms of features and I probably would never be able to go back to Virtual PC, but at the same time I wonder whether VMware's features are worth all the extra pain?
