VMware Communities
sommert
Contributor
Contributor

Video Problem when supending guest then resuming under different video.

Most of the time I work from my docking station with two external monitors. When I undock, I suspend my guest VMs. When I go to resume them undocked I get an error message in red.

I then get an option to discard the saved state or close. Is there any way around this situation?

ct 05 23:12:19.511: vmx| Msg_Post: Error

Oct 05 23:12:19.511: vmx| http://msg.svga.checkpointFBLayout The frame buffer layout of the current display cannot be made to match the frame buffer layout stored in the snapshot. The dimensions of the frame buffer in the snapshot are: Max width 2960, Max height 1770, Max size 20959232. The dimensions of the frame buffer on the current display are: Max width 2360, Max height 1770, Max size 16777216.* *Oct 05 23:12:19.511: vmx| http://msg.checkpoint.restoregroup.fail Error encountered while trying to restore the state of group SVGA from file "C:\Users\user1\Documents\Virtual Machines\New XP Machine\Windows XP Professional.vmss".

Reply
0 Kudos
10 Replies
admin
Immortal
Immortal

Go to VM > Settings > Display and configure it not to use Auto-detect.

We'll see what we can do to improve this in a future release.

Reply
0 Kudos
Resucigam
Contributor
Contributor

I get the same error.

This happens when I also move a VM from a laptop with an external monitor to a machine that does that have the same setup. The problem for me, is that the VM then becomes unusable. The VM gets stuck in a suspended state where I cannot edit the video settings. How do I solve this?

Reply
0 Kudos
sommert
Contributor
Contributor

I should have been a little more clear. I do have two external monitors, but I do not run multiple monitors in my VM, only from the Vista host. I usually have my host on the left and my guest on the right. Does that change the answer any?

Reply
0 Kudos
Tony_Apuzzo
Contributor
Contributor

Please, do. The multi-monitor feature in WS6 today is rudimentary and confusing. To my mind, it should work just like the single-monitor mode except multiplied:

If you configure multiple virtual monitors, each virtual monitor would independently be selectable for full-screen / quick-switch / windowed mode. You could put 2 virtual monitors on one physical screen (each virtual monitor in windowed mode). The mouse would be managed to run in the host physical coordinate system.

Reply
0 Kudos
admin
Immortal
Immortal

This happens when I also move a VM from a laptop with an external monitor to a machine that does that have the same setup. The problem for me, is that the VM then becomes unusable. The VM gets stuck in a suspended state where I cannot edit the video settings. How do I solve this?

For now, you have to throw away the suspend state and power the VM off before you can change the video settings, or you have to attach the external monitor, resume, and power off the VM first.

Reply
0 Kudos
Josh11
Contributor
Contributor

Can you elaborate a little on how to delete the state manually? I'm new to vmware but I'm running into this issue very frequently. I'm usually docked with my large external montior but if I'm on the road I'm undocked and on that laptap's display (much smaller resolution). It would be nice if this issue could be resolved without nuking state to deal with this scenerio (I have not issues with Virtual PC in this area) but in the mean time I'd be happy to just figure out how to delete the state and allow me to reboot the VM. I've tried experimenting with some options in the UI and directly on the state files without any luck and this has bitten me a few times now if I save the state instead of shutting down. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

Josh

Reply
0 Kudos
admin
Immortal
Immortal

Delete the .vmss file in the VM's directory.

Reply
0 Kudos
Kaus77
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Josh, I am having the same problem, but for some reason I cannot find the .vmss file in my VM's directory. The machine is under suspended state and cant figure out a way to shut it down.

Reply
0 Kudos
martin_knafve
Contributor
Contributor

I run into the same problem after having thrown away an old graphics card (still using same monitor). After the error message is displayed, the virtual machine is in suspended state. At this stage, all I can do is press Play. The Power Off button is disabled. Nor can I change the display settings (I'm guessing because the computer is suspended and not shut down). Also, some posts are referring to .vmss file. I could not find any such file on my disk (anywhere).

Being slightly desperate, here's what I did to solve the problem. Unless you're truly desperate, I suggest you don't follow these steps. I'm sure VMware does not support methods below and expect your VMware machines never to work again if you follow these steps. Besides, I'm pretty sure that there is a much better way to do this.

First, I tried to edit the .vmx file but this didn't help since the content was overwritten when changing snapshot. So instead, I backed up all .vmsn files in the VMware directory and repeated the following step for every .vmsn file:

1) Opened file in Notepad++.

2) Searched for:

svga.autodetect = "FALSE"

3) Replaced with:

svga.autodetect = "FALSE"

svga.numDisplays = "1"

svga.maxWidth = "3600"

svga.maxHeight = "1770"

There's some gotcha's here.

  • The maxWidth and maxHeight should probably be whatever VMware tells you after "The dimensions of the fram e buffer in the snapshot are" in the error messages. If you change them to something else, you'll just continue to have the same problem.

  • The .vmsn file is a binary file. You need a text editor which preserves special characters (so don't use Notepad or Word. I used Notepad++.

  • The part of the .vmsn file which stores the configuration seems to be fixed size. If you just replace the text as described above, you'll get a corrupt snapshot file. After the configuration section in the file where the above text was replaced, there's a bunch of NUL characters. I'm guessing that the configuration section in the file is fixed size and that VMware Workstation uses NUL's to pad the section to this fixed size. So what I did was simply to remove NUL characters until the modified file was exactly as large as the original file. In the above case, this was 74 because the original text ws 74 bytes shorter than the text I replaced it with. If I removed one character more or less I got a crash or error messages related to snapshots, CPU features, etc.

Reply
0 Kudos
gmccreight
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the suggestion Martin. It worked to fix the issue on my system.

I created a one line Perl script to help make the fix since I had a large number of .vmsn snapshot files.

perl -p -i -e 's/svga.autodetect = "TRUE"\n/svga.autodetect = "FALSE"\nsvga.numDisplays = "1"\nsvga.maxWidth = "3600"\nsvga.maxHeight = "1770"\n/ ; s/^\0{71}//' *.vmsn

For those not familiar, -i will do inline editing, and -p will loop over the files specified on the command line. In this case, all the .vmsn files in the current directory. After replacing the svga.autodetect="TRUE" with the new text, I remove 71 null characters (\0) from the beginning of the first line that has 71 null characters.

Once again, thanks for the excellent workaround Martin.

Reply
0 Kudos