VMware Workstation 7.1.3 and Windows 7 SP1

[EtreLibre]

Windows 7 SP1 is now out, and I installed it.

But, now, when VMware need to swap a little, I have an error message that tell there is a problem to alocate that memory.

Maybe do you know how fix it ?

Thank you

[Lawrence]

Jason Joel wrote:

Thanks to everyone who helped us to find this issue and test the temporary fix.  We plan to have a permanent solution available shortly that will address this issue and recover the host memory that this configuration change consumes.

I, and I suspect others, are awaiting word on a permanent fix  (first priority)

Then, I hope VMware puts some resources into Workstation (v7.5?), addressing USB, NAT, and other issues observed in v7 while you are at it.  Then it needs some serious performance testing (which talking to someone from the Workstation eng team at VMworld last year, I gathered had been seriously under-resourced (hardware, personnel, testing time) - the resulting product quality is as expected with all the new features, and lack of testing.

I recall the days when Vmware workstation Betas were more than good enough to use in production, build quality was so high.  I think the biggest thing VMware has lost in this last year has been the trust of users about product quality (not just Workstation).

[DigiBC]

VMware Workstation 7.1.4 (and VMware Player 3.1.4) has been released.

In the release notes I can't find a hint that this issue was fixed somehow...   :smileyconfused:

[EtreLibre]

In the release notes ( http://www.vmware.com/support/ws71/doc/releasenotes_ws714.html ) I read :

It also adds support for Windows 7 SP1 and Ubuntu 10.10 guest and host operating systems.

Good news

[peedy]

I wanted to post to mention I am using VMware Player on a 2008 R2 SP1 host that has 16GB of ram.  Every 24 hours or so the server would have 99% of its memory used up.  I installed the VMware Player 3.1.4 update and it still did the same behavior.  I implemented this workaround and it appears to have fixed the issue....I'll post back in 24 hours.

[peedy]

Problem still exists.  within 24 hours memory usage slowly creeps up to 99%

VMware Player 3.1.4 does not fix 2008R2 SP1 memory issue

[berntrop]

can you check which processes aee using the memory. so as to find out if it is a memory leak or agressive caching by the 

[peedy]

The most memory used by a process was the vmware-vmx process consuming 1.2GB.  I removed the workaround and implemented mem.allocguestlargepage = 0 in the config.ini for VM player and so far (only been an hour or so) the memory is not creeping up and up.

[berntrop]

That's odd, how does 1.2 GB of 16 GB equate to 99% use of memory?  I do not understand.

[peedy]

I don't understand it either but nearly 24 hours later and memory used is at 30%.  Seems large pages causes some issues??

[LrngToFly]

I just noticed that 7.1.4 was released a couple of weeks ago.  I held off upgrading my Win7 machines to SP1.  Has anyone confirmed that the memory issue is resolved for Win7 SP1 with vmware workstation 7.1.4?

Thanks much, AL

ps- as another poster said, the Release Notes for 7.1.4 lists this:

"It also adds support for Windows 7 SP1 and Ubuntu 10.10 guest and host operating systems."

But the Release Notes don't explicitly acknowledge the memory issue...  So that's why I'm asking if any users have first hand experience.

I see some are still experiencing memory issues, but I'm unsure if that has to do with SQL Server 2008 R2 (which I'm not using.)

[EtreLibre]

I have Windows 7 x64 SP1 and now it works

[freeload]

EtreLibre wrote:

I have Windows 7 x64 SP1 and now it works

Were you seeing the problem before you updated to 7.1.4?

Its useful to hear it works for you, but I would feel more confident about installing SP1 if I got confirmation from more than one person that WS 7.1.4 works, especially from someone that was seeing the problem with SP1 and 7.1.3.

[EtreLibre]

Yes... also, it's me who have created that topic

[wallone]

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit with SP1 (german) and for me this issue is NOT fixed with Workstation 7.1.4. I still have to apply the config.ini trick to ship around this Dynamic Memory problem ...

[EtreLibre]

When you remove config.ini it's not working ?

If there are problems with 7.1.4 version, I think the best solution is to create a new topic...

[alexto]

Strange. I had the same problem and posted in this topic before. Once applied 7.1.4 it WORKS fine. No longer need the config.ini trick so I removed it.

[WoodyZ]

Strange. I had the same problem and posted in this topic before. Once applied 7.1.4 it WORKS fine. No longer need the config.ini trick so I removed it.

Considering the VMware Workstation 7.1.4 Release Notes state that it  "adds support for Windows 7 SP1" then it's not so strange.

[alexto]

lol, I wanted to reply to Wallone in the previous post as it's strange that the problem persists for his case not mine. I'm totally aware 7.1.4 added support for W7SP1. :smileygrin:

[bababab]

Hi,

I've been debugging this Win7 SP1 poor performance problem for days now. Environment is Win7 32bit 4GB host and SBS2k3 Premium 1GB guest (giving it 2GB made not improvement). This SBS2k3 VM (with Exchange & MSSQL) is also running Trend's WFBSA. WFBSA's Messaging Agent (for Exchange) puts a significant load on a physical machine as well as a VM). Neither the confi.ini tweak or updating to VMWare Workstation from 7.1.3 to 7.1.4 did the trick for me. I even tried Using Converter and changing from SCSI to IDE drives to see if I had some thrashing problem (which was a waste of time). Also set the guest's page file from 1.5GB to 3GB hoping to prevent the quest from causing the host to page memory . . . . again with no joy.

What did work wonderfully today was "Edit | Preferences | Memory" and changing from "Allow some virtual memory to be swapped" to "Fit all virtual memory into reserved host ram". On the host in Task Mgr's Processes, the Working Set Memory went up from around 500MB, to 800MB after this change. So I've lost the very cool VMware shared memory management features (which worked before Win7's SP1), but at least SBS is usable again.

Why did Microsoft do this to Win7? Were they clueless that this would cripple competing VM products that already had dynamic mem mgmt? I know that the Win7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2's code base is almost the same. I also know that MS's new dynamic mem mgmt is MS's way of finally getting into the memory mgmt game on HyprV. I always wondered when this "shared code base" thing was going to cause problems. And now I know. Hopefully VMware will sort this all out eventually. My 2 cents: If it was me, I'd send MS the bill for fixing it.

Hope that helps someone . . .

Babab