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wmanning
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VMWare Workstation 11.1.0 build-2496824 freezing

Hi,

I have a Windows 7 x64 host using Workstation 11.1.0 (evaluation trial).  I have a Windows 8.1 Pro x64 virtual machine running.  That is the only VM running.  A few minutes after starting the VM, the VM and Workstation locks up.

I do Cntrl+Alt+Del and open the host task manager.  vmware.exe is always at 25% CPU (I have a Core i7-4600U processor so there is 4 cores with hypertheads).  vmware-vmx.exe CPU usuage varies.  My only option is to kill the vmware.exe process.  Then the host runs normally.  To run the windows 8.1 host again I have to restart the computer as it says the guest is in use.

When the computer restarts usually it is fine.  But this time it began running slow after about a minute.  I opened the windows task manager.  Once it was open (after about 10 minutes) I found the CPU usage was only 1% or so.  After a 10 or 15 minutes of looking around I started to kill VMware processes.  After I took some out the host ran normally.  It is still running normally now.

The freezing issue has happened 4 or 5 times in the last two or three days.  When I kill vmware.exe computer always goes back to normal. 

I did some proactive things like:

(1) add VM folder to antivirus exclusion list, windows search exclusion list, our backup software exclusion list.

(2) remove floppy and CD drive from the VM Hardware list.  I read that could cause a lock up.

The event log doesn't contain anything interesting.   I attached all of the vmware logs I have for the windows 8.1 vm.

Any suggestions on what I can do next to try to troubleshoot this further?  

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wmanning
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Actually the host is not locking up it just the vmware workstation app.  Wanted to clarify that.

Other than the Windows 8.1 Pro VM the only other VM I have is Windows XP Mode.  I started the XP Mode VM and it was still worked fine after working in the VM for an hour.  I then started the Windows 8.1 VM again and after three minutes it locked up as well as workstation.  In task manager I see two vmware-vmx.exe processes one at 25% CPU utilization (I presume Windows 8.1 VM) and one with barley any CPU utilization (likey XP Mode).  Also vmware.exe has 25% CPU utilization as before.

I go into Resource Monitor and suspend the vmware-vmx.exe process that's using 25% cpu and now workstation and the XP Mode VM are working fine.  I then clicked "shut down" the windows 8.1 vm and resumed the vmx process.  Workstation shutdown the Windows 8.1 vm successfully.  Workstation and XP Mode vm are still working normally.

So definitely issue between workstation and the windows 8.1 vm but I'm not a vm or workstation guru so I can't determine what the issue is.

Edit

Repeated the issue again.  Did a analyze wait chain on vmware.exe in resource monitor and it is waiting on itself: "One or more threads of vmware.exe are waiting to finish network I/O." and "vmware.exe PID XXXX Thread 6208".  So some kind of thread deadlock?  When I suspend the vmware-vmx.exe that's running my Windows 8.1 VM then the CPU usage of vmware.exe goes to 0%. But the vmware.exe wait chain still shows it waiting on itself with the same message as above.  I then resume vmware-vmx process and the CPU goes back up to 25%.

I can fix things without killing vmware or vmx processes by suspending the windows 8.1 vmx process, use windows 7 live taskbar preview to click shutdown (square button) and then resuming the vmx process.  At which point the windows 8.1 vm shutsdown immediately and workstation (with the xp mode vm) works normally.

It worked find for a few days but started giving me this problem.

Edit2

OK solved issue I think.  Our IT guy installed Malwarebytes Anti-malware in addition to another anti-virus/anit-malware program.   That was causing the computer to "lock up" (run slow but cpu was near 0% so want' cpu loading) during start up but that seems a different issue than what I was seeing but it could affect workstation as well.  Also my VMs were using NAT so I tried switching to bridged and disabled the NAT and DHCP service.  Figured two less services to run.  Not sure which of those (if any) was causing the issue but after those changes it works (mostly fine).

Wes

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wmanning
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Actually the host is not locking up it just the vmware workstation app.  Wanted to clarify that.

Other than the Windows 8.1 Pro VM the only other VM I have is Windows XP Mode.  I started the XP Mode VM and it was still worked fine after working in the VM for an hour.  I then started the Windows 8.1 VM again and after three minutes it locked up as well as workstation.  In task manager I see two vmware-vmx.exe processes one at 25% CPU utilization (I presume Windows 8.1 VM) and one with barley any CPU utilization (likey XP Mode).  Also vmware.exe has 25% CPU utilization as before.

I go into Resource Monitor and suspend the vmware-vmx.exe process that's using 25% cpu and now workstation and the XP Mode VM are working fine.  I then clicked "shut down" the windows 8.1 vm and resumed the vmx process.  Workstation shutdown the Windows 8.1 vm successfully.  Workstation and XP Mode vm are still working normally.

So definitely issue between workstation and the windows 8.1 vm but I'm not a vm or workstation guru so I can't determine what the issue is.

Edit

Repeated the issue again.  Did a analyze wait chain on vmware.exe in resource monitor and it is waiting on itself: "One or more threads of vmware.exe are waiting to finish network I/O." and "vmware.exe PID XXXX Thread 6208".  So some kind of thread deadlock?  When I suspend the vmware-vmx.exe that's running my Windows 8.1 VM then the CPU usage of vmware.exe goes to 0%. But the vmware.exe wait chain still shows it waiting on itself with the same message as above.  I then resume vmware-vmx process and the CPU goes back up to 25%.

I can fix things without killing vmware or vmx processes by suspending the windows 8.1 vmx process, use windows 7 live taskbar preview to click shutdown (square button) and then resuming the vmx process.  At which point the windows 8.1 vm shutsdown immediately and workstation (with the xp mode vm) works normally.

It worked find for a few days but started giving me this problem.

Edit2

OK solved issue I think.  Our IT guy installed Malwarebytes Anti-malware in addition to another anti-virus/anit-malware program.   That was causing the computer to "lock up" (run slow but cpu was near 0% so want' cpu loading) during start up but that seems a different issue than what I was seeing but it could affect workstation as well.  Also my VMs were using NAT so I tried switching to bridged and disabled the NAT and DHCP service.  Figured two less services to run.  Not sure which of those (if any) was causing the issue but after those changes it works (mostly fine).

Wes

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