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Bernacchini
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare Workstation freezes-BSOD Win10 host

It's been some weeks (maybe after Win10 threshold 2 upgrade) I have big problems with VMWare Workstation.

When the problem begans I was running Player7, so I decided to upgrade to the last version 12 hoping to resolve, but the problem remains: as soon as I try to run any VM, even a new one just created for test, the host machine freezes and BSOD appears, then reboot.

After several try (and reboots) for no apparent reason, the VM starts without any problem, but if I shoutdown and restart, the problem appears again.

I tried to uninstall and reinstall the VMWare Workstation software but nothing changed.

Anyone has had the same problem?

How can I solve/troubleshoot it?

Regards

Andrea Bernacchini

9 Replies
yanw
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Would you please upload your vmware.log and windows dump files ?

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Bernacchini
Contributor
Contributor

I checked almost everything:

  1. Windows update
  2. Drivers update
  3. MB Bios update
  4. Windows integrity (sfc /scannow, DISM....)
  5. Memtest/86
  6. Intel CPU-Test

For a while the VM started and worked perfectly, but today I had to reboot the server and when I tryed to start the VM... Crash!

Here attached every vmware log files and the memory minidump.

Analyzing the dump with WhoCrashed (free) it indicates the error: CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT that seems related to a problem with the clock of the CPU, very strange because a part of VMWare everything seems to work perfectly.

Any ideas?

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yanw
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Thanks, Bernacchini. And you use the bundled player to start VM,  right? If the BSOD still reproduceable when you use Workstatoin to start and use VM ?

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Bernacchini
Contributor
Contributor

I'm not sure to have understood what do you mean with "boundled player" or "Workstation" to start and use the VM...

I just run the WMware Workstation 12 Player (12.0.1 build-3160714) and then select my VM and Play it. As soon as I press play, appears the black window and the host freezes. Finally after some seconds... BSOD... Smiley Sad

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yanw
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

The log file said the host is Win8, not Win10. So are you sure your Host is Windows 10 system? And the dump was generated by LinkLogger.exe, so would you please try to disable that process and have a try?

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Bernacchini
Contributor
Contributor

Win-ver.jpg

As you can see winver shows Windows 10... Smiley Happy

BTW, yesterday I just upgraded VMWare Workstation to the new 12.1.0 build 3272444 and started my VM with LinkLogger process not running and the crash does not occour... cross finger?

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yanw
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Thanks for your feedback!  If you can use Workstation normally without any crash, then would you please just try again the case with LinkLogger process? Then we can identify that the crash is related to the LinkLogger

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Bernacchini
Contributor
Contributor

Unfortunately the problem occurred even after upgrading to version 12.1.0 and also launching the VM keeping closed the process LinkLogger.
When I can start the VM I try to leave the server up and running until I'm forced to restart it for some updates and at that point the roulette restarts with related BSOD until the VM starts correctly. Although the reported issue (Clock_Watchdog) seems to be on the CPU, before replacing it I'll try to replace the ram...

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yanw
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Then can you upload the BSOD dump file and the vmware.log with the LinkLogger not running ? Thanks