Unstable Guest After Switching Hosts

[djdave238]

Hi all,

I am trying to move my VM guest installation, Windows Server 2019 Standard, off of my old gaming laptop and onto a new, dedicated server.

Both machines are using the same VMWare Workstation Pro version, 15.5.7 (Build 17171714), and both machines are 64-bit Windows 10 Pro.

Performance on the new machine is terrible - images disappear from the screen, pieces of text in strings are missing, and the system boots Windows with CPU usage maxed at times. Windows wallpaper disappears and blacks the screen out, dragging a window makes chunks of it reappear. The whole guest OS feels horribly unstable. It wasn't like this at all on the previous host.

When I moved it over, Workstation did not do its usual thing of asking me if I "moved or copied" the VM, which seems suspicious as a likely cause. (Maybe?)

After the move (but before firing it up, stupid me) I increased the memory available from 8GB > 32GB, and the CPU from 4 Processor / 1 Core > 4 Processor / 2 Core.

Old Host:

ASUS ROG G751J (2015) Gaming Laptop
Intel Core i7-4710HQ @ 2.50GHz 2.49 GHz (4 Core)
16GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (1T)
NVidia GeForce GTX 970M (3GB)

New Host:

HP Z440 Tower Server
Intel Xeon E5-2630 V3 @ 2.4GHz  2.4GHz (8 Core)
64GB DDR4 ECC RAM @ 1866 MHz (1T)
NVidia NVS 310 (512MB)

I honestly don't even know which direction to look. I've moved machines before, (even going from an AMD to an Intel), and I've never had these kinds of issues with Workstation (Pro or Player).

Any ideas at all?  Did I do something bone-headed?

[djdave238]

Update — I re-copied the VM, and this time changed NO settings. I just ran the VM "as is."  This time, it did ask its usual "Move or Copy," but I'm still getting the same instability.

So, rule out all settings changes to the VM itself. Something machine based... *groan*

[djdave238]

Update — I could be wrong, but it seems like disabling 3D acceleration may have done for the weird behavior. No more missing text, no more blacking out chunks of the screen. Probably a shoddy 3d processor packaged with this machine.

[wila]

Hi,

Make sure that the virtual hardware is set to a recent version and not something old like version 10 or older... as that does tend to give exactly these side effects.

If you insist on using old & unsupported virtual hardware then at least run the Windows update that updates your VMware VGA driver.

--
Wil

[djdave238]

Stuffed in an old GeForce GTX 1070 Ti from my closet... problem solved.

[wila]

Hi,

Glad to hear you resolved it and thanks for letting us know how.

Sadly, not everybody will have a spare GPU in their closet to try

--
Wil