Virtual machine freezing for 10 to 20 seconds at a...

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Are there any guides or information on how to diagnose why a windows XP guest virtual machine on a windows XP 64 host is freezing on me? (by freeze I mean the virtual machine becomes completely unresponsive, even task manager performance monitor stops responding intermittently for 10-20 seconds reproducibly?)

I posted about this earlier but perhaps my wording of the question was too specialized, it's happening in one application and is easily reproducible and I'm wondering how to get to the bottom of it since apparently I can expect no help from VMWare despite having paid for and renewed Workstation for many years I just discovered we have no support options at all from them. (I thought this was part of the benefit of buying the full workstation product instead of using the free server product)

AWo · ‎01-02-2009

Welcome to the forums and a Happy New Year!

Have you installed the VMWare Tools inside the guest?

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful" answers/replies. Thanks!!

vExpert 2009/10/11 [:o]===[o:] [: ]o=o[ :] = Save forests! rent firewood! =

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Yes I have. I've also implemented the suggestions in the whitepaper on benchmarking and performance guide and this is on a quad core system with raid 0 velociraptors and 4gb of ram, there should be no delay anywhere and usually there isn't just in this one area.

AWo · ‎01-02-2009

You wrote that happens while running an (specific?) application. Is it a common one? I know about a few applications (TreeSize for example) which even makes physical servers unresponsive. Does this also happen while only the OS is running?

vExpert 2009/10/11 [:o]===[o:] [: ]o=o[ :] = Save forests! rent firewood! =

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

It's visual studio 2008 from Microsoft and it's intermittently happening in the exact same place when compiling code. It's never happened when I used to run it on a host only, but now I run it only in a guest OS and it's not practical to test if running it on the host causes the guest to freeze if that's what you're getting at; but in any case I don't want specific help fixing this, it's way too esoteric and specialized (at least that's my assumption after my first super detailed post was met with the sound of crickets and no response at all).

What I'm after is more in the way of information on how to go about diagnosing this kind of problem. I'm guessing visual studio is doing something that VMWare workstation does not like or has trouble dealing with and only doing it intermittently or else there is a big bug in WS 6.5 which is not out of the realm of possibility but Visual Studio 2008 is a known beast so my blame leans towards it first.

I'm not sure how to go about actually diagnosing the problem, I've already tried tweaking everything to make the problem go away and that route hasn't got me anywhere so I'm wondering how this kind of thing is diagnosed, is there special modes or diagnostic software or troubleshooting steps or...?

AWo · ‎01-02-2009

The only thing I know of is to raise the debug level. Go to the guest options, "Advanced" and set the "Gather debug information" to full or statistics.

That's what the manual say:

Gather debugging information – You can run a virtual machine so that it collects additional debugging information that is helpful to VMware technical support in resolving issues.

Workstation has three modes with regards to collecting debugging information:

• None – No debugging information is gathered. Selecting None allows the virtual machine to run faster than in the other modes.

On Windows hosts, before you create ACE instances, be sure the virtual machine is running in normal mode before you package the virtual machine.

• Full debugging mode – Useful if the virtual machine sometimes crashes and you want to send the debugging logs to VMware technical support.

• Statistics mode – Useful if the virtual machine runs extremely slowly under some workloads. You can send the statistics file to VMware technical support.

When the cause and remedy for the problem are found, return to normal mode by selecting None.

When you make a recording of virtual machine execution, full debugging mode is used.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful" answers/replies. Thanks!!

vExpert 2009/10/11 [:o]===[o:] [: ]o=o[ :] = Save forests! rent firewood! =

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Ahhh...ok that revealed something not sure what, but I fired up my virtual machine set it all up for a build, then waiting until 1:23 pm today and ran my build and got a freeze first try. shut it down and examined the log and at exactly the time I was doing the build and it froze there is a bunch of entries covering the time it was frozen as follows:

Jan 02 13:23:14.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.218: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.250: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.281: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.312: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.343: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.375: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.406: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.437: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.468: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.500: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.515: mks| MKS switching absolute mouse off

Jan 02 13:23:14.531: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.562: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.593: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.625: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.656: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.687: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.718: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.750: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.781: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.812: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.843: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.875: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.906: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.953: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:14.984: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.015: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.046: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.078: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.109: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.140: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.171: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.234: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.265: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.296: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.328: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.359: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.390: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.421: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.453: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.484: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.531: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.562: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.593: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.625: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.656: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.687: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.718: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.750: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.781: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.812: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.843: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.875: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.906: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.937: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:15.968: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.062: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.093: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.125: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.156: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.187: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.218: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.250: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.281: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.312: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.343: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.375: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.406: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.437: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.468: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.515: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.546: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.578: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.609: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.640: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.671: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.703: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.734: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.765: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.796: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.828: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.859: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.890: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.921: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.953: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:16.984: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.078: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.109: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.140: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.171: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.203: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.234: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.265: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.296: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.328: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.359: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.390: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.421: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.453: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:17.484: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:20.671: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:23.796: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:26.984: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:30.109: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:30.125: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox timed out.

Jan 02 13:23:30.125: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out.

Jan 02 13:23:33.234: vcpu-0| TrueNPFault: LPN 0x917c

Jan 02 13:23:37.687: mks| MKS switching absolute mouse on

Jan 02 13:23:37.687: mks| MKS ungrab warp to (1482, 847)

Unfortunately doing a search for TrueNPFault reveals nothing at all here or on the internet in general. Anyone see this before?

Scissor · ‎01-02-2009

Are you already running Workstation 6.5.1?

Can you attach the vmware.log and .vmx file from the directory containing the Guest?

kdshapiro · ‎01-02-2009

Out of curiosity, and this is a shot in the dark, did you change the execution settings under processors from the default of Automatic?

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Yes it's 6.5.1 and the log file and vmx file are attached.

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Yes it's 6.5.1 and the log file and vmx file are attached.

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Yes it's 6.5.1 and the log file and vmx file are attached.

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Yes it's 6.5.1

I've tried to attach the log file and the vmx file but it keeps saying a serious error has occured when I click on post message so I'll paste the vmx here and try the log separately.

=-=-=-==-

.encoding = "windows-1252"

config.version = "8"

virtualHW.version = "7"

memsize = "1024"

MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"

MemTrimRate = "0"

displayName = "DEVXPPRO"

guestOS = "winxppro"

numvcpus = "1"

usb.present = "TRUE"

sound.present = "TRUE"

sound.filename = "-1"

sound.autodetect = "TRUE"

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"

ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"

scsi0:0.present = "FALSE"

scsi0:0.fileName = "DEVXPPRO.vmdk"

pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"

tools.upgrade.policy = "useGlobal"

ehci.present = "FALSE"

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"

ide1:0.filename = "auto detect"

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

scsi0.present = "TRUE"

scsi0.virtualDev = "buslogic"

buslogic.noDriver = "FALSE"

pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge4.functions = "8"

pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge5.functions = "8"

pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge6.functions = "8"

pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge7.functions = "8"

vmci0.present = "TRUE"

roamingVM.exitBehavior = "go"

nvram = "Clone of DEVXPPRO.nvram"

ft.secondary0.enabled = "TRUE"

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"

vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "16777216"

pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "18"

pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "19"

pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "20"

pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "32"

vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "36"

usb:0.present = "TRUE"

usb:1.present = "TRUE"

vmci0.id = "-1011332117"

usb:1.deviceType = "hub"

usb:0.deviceType = "mouse"

checkpoint.vmState = "DEVXPPRO.vmss"

gui.exitAtPowerOff = "TRUE"

gui.fullScreenAtPowerOn = "FALSE"

policy.vm.mvmtid = ""

extendedConfigFile = "DEVXPPRO.vmxf"

floppy0.fileName = "A:"

virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:01:6e:44"

uuid.location = "56 4d be 13 66 79 ea 53-20 55 33 3f 7b 01 6e 44"

uuid.bios = "56 4d be 13 66 79 ea 53-20 55 33 3f 7b 01 6e 44"

scsi0:0.redo = ""

pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"

scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"

ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "33"

sound.pciSlotNumber = "34"

ehci.pciSlotNumber = "-1"

ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

mks.enable3d = "FALSE"

usb.pciSlotNumber = "37"

floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"

floppy0.autodetect = "TRUE"

sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"

scsi0:0.mode = "independent-persistent"

ide1:0.startConnected = "FALSE"

scsi0:1.present = "TRUE"

scsi0:1.fileName = "DEVXPPROFIXED.vmdk"

scsi0:1.mode = "independent-persistent"

scsi0:1.redo = ""

monitor = "release"

priority.grabbed = "high"

priority.ungrabbed = "normal"

isolation.tools.dnd.disable = "TRUE"

isolation.tools.vmdebug.disable = "TRUE"

debugStub.allow = "FALSE"

snapshot.action = "keep"

monitor.virtual_mmu = "automatic"

monitor.virtual_exec = "automatic"

usb.generic.autoconnect = "FALSE"

-

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

woops, every time it said a serious error has occurred this forum software posted the message part anyway but it appears it did take the log file at one point so it's all there now.

Unfortunately I don't see a way to delete those duplicate posts sorry.

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-02-2009

Execution settings are set to automatic when this problem occurs. I've tried other settings in the course of trying to find a workaround but they either didn't work and gave an error as unsupported or made the guest very slow.

TheOtherJohnC · ‎01-05-2009

Any ideas anyone?

theintestine · ‎04-21-2009

I had a hang during login that might be caused by the same thing. Try this out:

Cheers,

Tim-----

theintestine - Extracting goodness from crap for 20 years

netgrom · ‎10-06-2009

Hi just wondering if you even found the root cause of this issue as I am currently experience a similar problem with VS2008 in a VDI environment any info you have would be handy.

All

Virtual machine freezing for 10 to 20 seconds at a time, reproducible - "TrueNPFault" in debug log