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striderjw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMware-workstation 6.0.1 Update on SuSE 10.1

I inadvertently pressed the 'correct answer' button. My problem is extant, not solved. I am having considerable trouble using this forum (slowness, etc).

My original post stated:

I downloaded and installed the new update yesterday.

When I ran WS6.0.1 after installation, all seemed well: installed VMware Tools, ran programs, etc. Today, starting my Windows XP Professional VM, I got a message that said my processor may not be powerful enough to run VMware and is believed to be 13MHz. When XP starts, it's ultra-accelerated! I killed WS and restarted but the problem remained. It's unusable like this.

For the time being, I have reverted to VMware-workstation-6.0.0-45731.i386.tar.gz, which works normally as before.

Host: SuSE Linux 10.1 with all updates. Guest: Windows XP Professional SP2 with updates to last week. PC: Dell Precision 690 with 1 Xeon 5140 (2.33GHz) and 2GB RAM.

All previous updates (e.g., WS5.5.3 to 6.0.0) went flawlessly.

All constructive comments, information, etc, welcome.

Birdie responded:

Try this http://vmblog.com/archive/2007/08/24/help-vmware-fixing-time-keeping-problems-with-the-guest-os.aspx , tell us if it helps. The official solution resides here: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1420

I replied:

With respect, you appear to have missed the point. WS5.5 and 6.0.0 have worked satisfactorily on this PC. WS6.0.1 worked immediately after installation but not after reboot. I have had no 'timing issues' with WS5.5 or 6.0.0; so, why should I tinker with my settings? The problem appears to lie in 6.0.1 (at least, in the tar version that I used). What is different in 6.0.1? Is it a deliberate change or a bug?

As stated in my original post, I have reinstalled 6.0.0 and intend to continue to use it at least till a satisfactory solution has been found for my 6.0.1 problem.

I have since noticed dbmoran's post 'WS 6.0.1 upgrade rendered most of my VMs unusable ("heads up")'. I am not alone in having problems with this update.

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9 Replies
KevinG
Immortal
Immortal

Does your Dell Precision 690 have a Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® 5140 2.33GHz, 1333 FSB, 4MB L2 Cache, 65 watts ?

What was the exact message that you received when running 6.0.1 ?

Did you check the host to see if there was any power management process running on the host? like cpufreq...etc

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striderjw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Kevin

I can't recall the exact message but it was to the effect that my processor might not be powerful enough to run VMware & quoted the CPU speed as 13MHz. Once I clicked 'OK', Windows then started in super-accelerated mode - even the text-mode part. I wasn't running any power management utility. My PC has one dual-core Xeon 5140 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz, 4MB, 1KW).

Nothing changed on my PC between my removing 6.0.1, because it made my VM unusable, and my reinstalling 6.0.0; yet, the latter runs perfectly. There is clearly something in 6.0.1 that is giving me the acceleration effect in my VM, something that is not in 6.0.0 or the 5.x releases.

dbmoran has had problems, too, though they are different from my experience.

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striderjw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The problem has now started to occur on WS6.0.0. Clearly, uninstalling 6.0.1 didn't revert everything to its previous state. The error message that I get when starting my WinXPPro VM is: 'This processor may not be powerful enough to run VMware Workstation with good performance. Your estimated processing speed is 13 Mhz. Refer to http://www.vmware.com/info?id=4 for this product's minimum requirements.'

Birdie suggesed and it seems to have worked (at least, my VM is functioning as expected). I shall know definitely in a few days' time, after several reboots.

As I've stated before, I've never had this problem on either of my PCs. This PC has been running satisfactorily since January, hosting SuSE 10.1 32-bit. I had been contemplating a move to openSUSE 10.3 32-bit early next year but wonder if that is wise in view of this unexpected excitement.

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chapmandu
Contributor
Contributor

FYI - This might be linked to this thread :

steve

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KevinG
Immortal
Immortal

You received this message because host is not running at it's max CPU speed, There is some type of power management in the BIOS or process running on the host that is limiting the CPU speed

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chapmandu
Contributor
Contributor

sorry incorrect post above - mistakenly posted to wrong thread...

steve

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striderjw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Birdie kindly pointed me to an 'unofficial' solution to my 'timing' problem:

On a Linux host server:

To prevent guest clocks from running too quickly, specify the correct maximum host CPU speed in your global configuration file, /etc/vmware/config. If this file exists, edit it with a text editor,

adding the lines described below. The file may not exist. If it does not exist, create it as a plain text file.

Add the following lines to your global configuration file:

host.cpukHz = "X" where "X" equals the maximum speed in KHz of your host machine. That is, its speed in MHz times 1000 or its speed in GHz times 1000000.

A 3GHz machine would be 3000000.

host.noTSC = TRUE

ptsc.noTSC = TRUE

In my case, 2.33GHz translates to 2330000.

This works but the lines disappeared from /etc/vmware/config today and I had to reinsert them. Is this a usual occurrence and, if so, what can I do about it?

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brian-brophy
Contributor
Contributor

I am running Suse 10.1 host with Windows XP SP2 as a guest and also encountered this issue. It started occurring within the last month or so. I have not updated VMWare in several months, but do take the Suse patches, so it could be related to one of those.

I have found it appears to be a timing issue. My guess is that depending either on load or order or processes during startup, the VMWare tools sometimes incorrectly detect the host CPU. I am running Dual 2.8 GHz Xeons on a Dell Precision 690. The issue happens about half the times my machine is booted. What I have found as a workaround is that by restarting VMWare, it solves the issue: sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restart

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KSUITPRO
Contributor
Contributor

I am using Ubuntu hardy and I too am having the same issue. Ijust wanted to say thanks for posting that temp fix brian-brophy. After I tried sudo /etc/init.d/vmware restarteverything worked fine.

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