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jaimea
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No way unity / copy paste / drag and drop / Workstation pro 12.5 Windows 7 guest 7 host

Hello,

after trying for a looong time, I'm frustrated. My workstation works fine with several OSs (W7 64, W10, Ubuntu...), but with my workhorse which is a old VM with W7 32b, I'm unable to make Unity, or drag and drop (or copy and paste) work.

Drag and drop operations always show the forbidden icon.

Copy (in host) does not enable the paste option (in guest) - or vice versa.

Trying to activate Unity causes some funny messages, most usual "The guest operating system is not running VMware tools" (it is) but even "The guest operating system does not support unity".

I've tried everything I've thought or found around - from cloning the VM to running VMware as administrator, disabling / enabling guest isolation, reinstalling the VMware tools, tweaking the vmx file...

At this point I'll very much welcome any suggestion.


Thank you,

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

There's more roads that lead to Rome and I'm not often willing to give up. Smiley Happy

As we are in "remove non standard lines from the .vmx" mode already, how about removing these two lines:

acpi.smbiosVersion2.7 = "FALSE"

acpi.mouseVMW0003 = "FALSE"

Especially the first line I cannot find any info on what it does (well I can guess) and the only  thing I see is crash related when searching for it.

The line with the mouse is probably fine.

Then you tried a vmware tools repair.. and it failed. But what did it fail on?

There's a log, vminstxxxx.log in the temp folder (see: Troubleshooting a failed VMware Tools installation in a Guest Operating System (1003908) | VMware KB )

Please attach.

Finally.. the copy&paste failing is usually to do with the vmtoolsd daemon not running (for whatever reason).

I do see that on one of my VMs every now and then and in that case instead of restarting the VM I first kill the vmtoolsd process that runs under my own user and then run a little batch file.

It has this contents:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\vmtoolsd.exe" -n vmusr

It gets stuck on running.. which is fine (you can kill the stuck dos screen ) there should again be a vmtoolsd process running under your user account.

In my case I always get copy&paste back after that workaround.

I'm not sure if it helps with unity.

--

Wil

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

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wila
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Hi,

Just so you know, if you run VMware Workstation on windows as administrator then certain features like drag and drop will not work. This is due to a windows security feature (you can't drag and drop between applications with different user privileges)

See also: http://superuser.com/questions/59051/drag-and-drop-file-into-application-under-run-as-administrator

As for the unity issue, two remarks.

First one is that unity will not work for linux guests anymore, that feature has been axed for linux guests.

Now you mentioned that you are trying to use it with Windows 7, so in theory it should work.

If it complains about vmware tools not being correctly installed then that might still be the case.

Do not try a repair install from within the Guest OS as it likely will not fix this, unfortunately the "Reinstall VMware Tools" from the drop down menu also falls in that same category.

You really need the guest OS to reboot inbetween uninstall and install to make sure that all the files from VMware Tools are in the correct locations and of the correct version.

In short follow these steps:

  • Uninstall VMware Tools
  • Reboot guest OS
  • Install VMware Tools
  • Reboot guest OS.

A bit of a longer description is: 

  • In the guest Windows operating system, go to Control Panel -> Programs & Features -> Select VMware Tools -> Uninstall

Follow the steps from the installer to completely uninstall VMware Tools

  • Reboot the guest OS.
  • Then from the Virtual Machine menu select "Install VMware Tools"

If no installer appears, go to the DVD-rom within windows and click "setup" (for 32 bits windows) or "setup64" (for 64 bits windows)

Once you see an installer, click "Next" until Finish, keep the defaults.

  • Reboot the guest when done installing (it will ask by itself to reboot)

--

Wil

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

... I replied twice to your post from my email, guess it is on its way?

Just in case:

a) Thanks (big thanks!)

b) It was of no help, unfortunately. Uninstalling the vmware tools yielded the system unable to boot (BSOD, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL). Tried *everything* to recover it, then every option in the VM: just 1 processor, all 3 virtualization modes, 1 fixed screen, USB down to 2.0... every option, still the BSOD.

So for now I'm back to my limited system, can't invest more time in this for the moment (several hours today)

Great Christmas!

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

Yikes!

It is the first time I've heard that a user gets a BSOD after removing/uninstalling VMware Tools and I've handed out the same advice on how-to re-install VMware Tools many times before.

Only thing I miss from your list is to try without 3D support, but frankly having that enabled should not result in ending up with a BSOD either.

Uninstalling VMware Tools should result in the VM falling back to windows native drivers and as long as those are not corrupted it should work without issues.

The VMware Tools enhance your virtual machine on quite a few areas, but the VM should work without it.

Is there an additional code? Eg. 0A or 7B or ...

What I would do in your case is.

1. Make a backup from your virtual machine with VMware Workstation shut down, so that at least it doesn't get worse (like loosing your data)

2. Get yourself a Windows 7 install CD and boot from it, then repair your Windows 7

PS: As for the email to forum gateway, I guess it's broken for the moment. I will report it on your behalf.

--

Wil

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

... and thanks again!

Actually I did remove the 3D acceleration, just forgot in the email. Sad part is I forgot to snapshot first so I lost the day... my bad! (of course I had a backup but a few days old)

I was very surprised also to find this causing such a "hard" error. And, yes, there was a 0x00.. 00A (I have attached the BSOD).

I'll try as you suggest. And thanks for reporting the email gateway broken.

Best regards,

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

You even have a screenshot, wow. I forgot that Microsoft stopped putting actual technical info in the blue screen.

Error 0x00lotsof000a just says "it's a driver trying to write in memory somewhere where it should not have" ... without the actual driver info, that error is about as much info as "blue screen" ..

Before uninstalling / reinstalling VMware Tools again I would personally check windows to make sure it isn't damaged.

One way to do that is to run the following from an administrative command prompt

sfc /scannow 

If problems have been reported you can use the following to extract the details:

findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log >"%userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt" 

Then open the new file on the desktop

Summary is at the bottom.

Edit: The earlier suggested reinstall is good too of course, this is just another way to find out what is wrong with the install.

--

Wil

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

the odyssey continues!

sfc /scannow

only reported a few errors about msjet40.dll (which is a database related file IIRC)

Last line: "2016-12-27 19:37:04, Info                  CSI    00000227 [SR] Verify and Repair Transaction completed. All files and registry keys listed in this transaction  have been successfully repaired"

Well, uninstall vmware tools, then boot, then same BSOD, repairs, no way, boot from W7 CD, repair, no way, with a nice and meaningful message (8): "Wrong driver".

"Wrong driver" is unfortunately not very informative.

But am I wrong assuming msjet40.dll cannot be related to the problem?

It never stops to amaze how scarce the error information is...

Thanks again!

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

The error "wrong driver" doesn't help much indeed.

No I don't think the msjet40.dll is your problem, at least as you say it is database related and should normally not be needed by drivers at boot time.

Now I did notice in your initial blue screen that the system is making a crash dump to disk.

If you can get those .dmp files off the disk (mount the virtual disk in another VM or use a live CD) then you can actually get more details by analyzing the dump files.

There's a variety of ways on doing that, but the easiest way is most likely using the following website:

http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=analyze

(I've used it myself in the past and it was pretty good)

Just upload a dmp file and it gets you back what was running at the time of the crash.

--

Wil

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

you really are a treasure trove of information... but no luck, Windows is not actually saving the DMP file. I even removed an old one that existed in the windows folder, and checked the location and name for the file, and it is not being generated.

For what I see it may mean the problematic driver is the hard drive (IDE in my case) one.

I'll research a bit until my frustration overflows again.

Thank you so much, you've been really helpful!

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

Guess I waste too much time at these forums Smiley Happy you do tend to pick up a few things here and there.

Strange.

If you have an IDE disk then that should never be an issue.

VMware presents a virtual IDE disk as a bog standard IDE one and the Windows inbox drivers for IDE that come with it should just work.

Is there anything else that is special about this VM, like has it be migrated from a physical host  to a VM?

Have you tried starting in safe mode? ( How to Enable Safe Mode in Windows 7 | PCWorld )

Safe mode also has a boot logging option that might help.

--

Wil

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

I wish I had more time to devote to these forums... :smileyblush:

Whatever, again, yes, this VM comes from an old laptop, it was migrated several years ago, then a Vista machine, later upgraded to Windows 7.

I already tried safe booting, I'm sorry I didn't mention, stopped at somethingPNP.sys (IIRC), googled, removed the file, stopped at the previous one... I lost my notes regarding this.

At this moment I have "migrated" the VM hdd to be SCSI - just in case there was a problem with the IDE driver. Attempting startup repairs...

Do you think it is worth the time booting in safe mode again activating a log?

Thanks man,

jaime

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jaimea
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No way...

SCSI disk, behavior exactly the same (I hoped to discover something given than IDE hard disk writing was apparently failing...)

Safe mode with boot logging, no log at all, same as with the memory dump.

Somehow it seems windows is unable to write to the hard disk once the VMware tools are removed.

Best regards,

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

Oh a formerly physical machine, that might explain some of it.

There's a reasonable chance that something from the past now has decided to bite you...

There's several people on the forums here that tell you to never go from physical to virtual. Personally I'm fine with it (this VM I'm typing in used to be a physical windows xp and now is windows 8 in a VM and it works wonderful)

The thing is however that just migrating leaves a LOT of old cruft and while that might work, it usually doesn't work as good as a virtual from scratch machine works.

You have to get rid of most of that old cruft and especially the hardware drivers as they might cause instability.

If you still can roll back to before you uninstall VMware Tools then the main thing to do is to clean out all old and unused hardware drivers.

These drivers normally do not show... but if you follow the steps as in the following article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/remove-old-drivers-after-upgrading-to-new-hardware/

Then you can see them in device manager, except the drivers look a bit faded.

Remove all of them that look like they don't belong there anymore.

That's will take a bit of work though.

--

Wil

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

Well at the very least now I have a cleaner system... man I've uninstalled several dozens of unused drivers!

There's a funny one, though: fs_rec (legacy driver, under non plug and play drivers). It resists uninstall - I mean, I can and uninstall it, reboot, then it is there again, grayed out so not loaded but present in the list. Amazingly I found 3 different versions of this file in my system, in 9 different locations... windows' so funny at times 😞

The system's now quite clean, but exactly the same keeps happening. Good thing we have snapshots to try this things.

I'm running out of stamina. At some point I'll give up and migrate to a new machine.

You're help is really appreciated, wila.

jaime

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wila
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Hi,

Personally I would not have removed the fs_rec driver from the legacy -non plug and play- drivers. It is from Microsoft itself IIRC.

Hmm.. could you attach a vmware.log file of the VM to a reply here? Maybe that will tell us something.

--

Wil

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

no problem, fs_rec won't go away 🙂

Sure I can attach a log file, but do you mean from a normal (successful) boot, or one after uninstalling the VMware tools?

Have a great 2017

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wila
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Hi,

Happy New Year as well.

Just a vmware.log file, I doubt it will tell me much more with VMware Tools uninstalled, so I'm fine with either state as long as it is from that VM.

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Wil

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

... and here you are, then, latest log, hope you find something meaningful there 🙂

All the best,

jaime

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wila
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Hi Jaime,

Your VM configuration certainly isn't plain vanilla.

There's nothing I can point out clearly as to what might cause the issue, but I do see things like "hot memory", 4 VCPU's, 2 screens, disabled acpibios 2.7 (?), vramSize on the vmx that isn't enough (the svga.autodetect will override and correct that though), acpi.mouseVMW0003 = "FALSE" (?)

Neither of those settings I would expect to crash the VM, but I would also not be surprised that for example the dual screen config without vmware tools does end up crashing the guest OS.

Hmm... I retract my earlier statement that it doesn't matter which vmware.log you attach, could you also attach a vmware.log from when the guest OS crashes after unnstalling vmware tools?

--

Wil

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

here it is - it also includes the log from the earlier (and normal) boot today, but I was unsure exactly where to cut, so I left everything to avoid the risk of information loss.

Not vanilla, that's true.

FWIW, I checked again, no dump file.

Thanks for keeping up, Wila!

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