Spontaneous reboots on Win7 x64 VM Host

[Derek201110141]

This is infuriating.  I setup a great VMware Workstation Host.  HP Elite 8100 CMT desktop, 16GB (4x4) of Kingston PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz memory and a 128GB SDD system drive and separate 128GB SDD for VM storage.

Installed Windows 7 Enterprise x64 from scratch.  Very basic/clean install.  A few basic programs & tools inclding VMware Workstation 7.1.2.

For weeks or more I have been seeing the machine just up and restart for no apperent reason.  Little, or rather no indication in Event Logs.

Not often.  Once maybe twice a day on a busy day.  Once maybe twice a week on a slow week.

• So I changed the box, swapped my SSD's and memory into a new HP Elite 8100.  Same problem.
  

• Rebuilt Windows install from scratch again: Same problem.
  

• No firmware updates available for SSD's as they were taken from Dell laptops, so bought two shiny new high speed SSD's, 120GB each.  Rebuilt system again.  Installing Win7 x64 Enterprise and VMware workstation 7.1.3: Same problem
  

• Replace all 16GB of Kingston RAM with 16GB or Corsair memory (4x4GB) this morning.  By noon it had rebooted itself again.
  

I have replaced all the hardware and reinstalled the OS multiple times with the cleanest install I can.

I have one other machine with basically the same hardware configuration but doesn't run VMware yet.  It has never had this issue.

Swapped the Kingston RAM into another HP 8100 not running VMware this morning.  No reboots yet.

Anyone else having VM host spontaneously rebooting?????

Help???  Anyone???

[continuum]

does it happen with WS 6.5.5 too ?

[Derek201110141]

Couldn't say.  I haven't used 6.5 for awhile and working with testing under Win7 x86 & x64 and Win2008R2, not sure I want to move backwards.  Although if I can't find a better solution or reason, I might have to give that a try.  Googling and these discussion have one thread about spontaneous reboots but it is regarding Fusion and from a few years back.  Not sure if it would be related.

[continuum]

thats not a step back - WS 6.5.5 in my experience is stable and outperforms WS 7 clearly - the difference getting bigger the more RAM your host has.

[Derek201110141]

Really.  Maybe I should reconsider 6.5.5 then.  I was interested in ensuring that all the features of Win7 like aero and the optimized support for i series processors were all there.  But if v.7.x is less stable maybe I should go back to 6.5.5.

All my current test & dev VM's were created from scratch on v7 and have VMtools 7.1.3 installed.  I will have to see how tricky going backwards is.

Thanks for the advice.

[Derek201110141]

Further testing seems to indicate that this is not related to VMware Workstation.  Previously symptoms would present right after installing VM Workstation however a recent series of rebuilds with the HP Quick Restore showed the problems existed without VM installed.

Seems to be a combination of HP 8100, Solid State Hard Drive, 16GB memory, and Windows 7 x64.

Reduce the amount of memory or rebuild on a HDD and the problem does not present.

Issue not VM specific.

< grrr. . . argh >