The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.....VMWare 9

[SJOram]

Hi,

I've just upgraded from V8 to V9 and changed the VMs to use V9 hardware.

I've been using V8 and previous releases with no issues but in the space of 2 days I have no lost 2 VMs to the above error. VMWorkstation hangs on boot and becomes unresponsive. One had XP as the Guest OS and the other had Win 7 Enterprise. I put the first loss down to user error and I threw it away. The second one is more problematic and I am now losing confidence in VMWare.

VM Workstation runs on a Windows 7 laptop and I have run CHKDSK on the host and it reported no issues. I do not have antivirus running.

Is there any way to recover from this? Is there any way of preventing it???? Any ideas as to what might be causing the problem?

Cheers

[julienvarela]

Hi,

Did you upgrade the vmware tools first and then upgraded your hardware version?

Regards,

Julien

[SJOram]

No, I changed the HW version and then upgraded the tools. Both systems worked fine for a while but then would not restart.

Stephen

[julienvarela]

Ok,

Did you check here ?

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/432624

Uncheck the CD/DVD Drive "Connected at power on" option.

Regards,

Julien

[SJOram]

I have unchecked all external I/O just in case but to no avail.

It is the SCSI controller that is causing the issue. I don't even get as far as the VM boot screen. VMWare just freezes up and task manager says the process is almost immediately unresponsive. I cannot map the hard drive under utilities either as I get the same I/O Error.

Something appears to have corrupted the virtual hard disk but I don't know what or why and now as I said I am concerned it will happen again.

Thanks

Stephen

[SJOram]

I guess it must just be me so!

[dariusd]

Hi Stephen,

If you're receiving I/O errors just trying to map the virtual disk on the host, the cause is almost certainly a failing hard disk in your host.  CHKDSK usually only does a superficial scan, and a problem that's isolated to the disk region containing your VM's data could easily trigger exactly the situation you're describing.

You may find additional clues in your Windows host's Event Viewer: Start > Run > eventvwr, then look in the System section for events related to I/O errors.

I suggest running an exhaustive disk test.  Instructions are available on Microsoft's website.  Be sure to select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors... it will take much longer to run the check, but is much more likely to find (and maybe even fix) the problem.

Cheers,

--

Darius