Vmware Workstation 16.1.0 - Support - Online community defect?

[whorsfall]

Hi,

Minor defect. Using: Vmware Workstation 16.1.0 build-17198959

When choosing from the VMware Help Menu - Support - Online community

It takes me to:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/workstation

Which is saying "Page not found"

Thanks,

Ward.

[asajm · Accepted solution]

Hi @whorsfall 

Can you try to choose Product Support Center?

Will take you to https://www.vmware.com/support/workstation.html

At the end of the page, you will find Workstation Pro Community

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

That's both a missing redirect as well as a missing change in the product as the forums have been replaced recently.
I'll report the missing redirect in the Platform Status forum on your behalf.

Hopefully @Mikero can open a ticket for this.

--
Wil

[whorsfall]

Hi asajm,

Thanks for your answer. Your method gets me there which is good.

Thanks again,

Ward

[whorsfall]

Hi wila,

Thanks for your response that would be great if he can.

If I may ask it looks like there are 2 methods to log bugs. Either log a support ticket or post on this forum.

Are these the only two methods? (In case there is another formal method I should know about).

Thanks again,

Ward.

[wila]

Hi Ward,

Logging a support ticket is the only official way to have someone look into a bug.
The community forum is not an official support channel, the forum is for discussing your problems with other users of the same VMware product. But besides other users, some VMware employees also tend to help out if they can and if they have the time to do so. Note that almost all of that is on personal title (not an actual part of their job).

Note also that I do not work for VMware, I only help out in my spare time and basically am "just another user".
However as a user moderator of the forum I do know who to contact for questions regarding either the forum or the desktop hypervisor product. Knowing where to post a question so that the right person sees them also does help.

--
Wil

[russtanner]

I don't have a support plan but may have found a bug. See:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Workstation-16-0-Run-VM-In-Background-Cause...

Do you have any suggestions about how I can get this to the development team?

Thanks!

[scott28tt]

@russtanner 

If you don’t have paid-for support, this is how you get support but informally rather than formally.

There are some members of the product team who help on these forums but not under any specific SLA or anything like that.

[russtanner]

Thanks. I appreciate that.

I posted this thread about VMs terminating when they are supposed to be running in the background in Win 10 64 VM Workstation 16.1. If you have any ideas they would be greatly appreciated. Clearly looks like something is broken.

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Workstation-16-0-Run-VM-In-Background-Cause...

I previously used VM Workstation 9 on Win 7 64 and it worked flawlessly for years.

[bonnie201110141]

Hi russtanner

I cannot open the thread you posted. It says "The message you are trying to access is not available.". Maybe it is due to the new community?

[bonnie201110141]

Thanks for reporting this issue. I have filed an internal bug to track the issue.

[russtanner]

Thank you very much. Very much appreciated.

I find that I have to be logged in to see my post I linked to above, so I'll post it below just in case:

Any help would be appreciated on this issue.

When running a virtual machine in Workstation, when I close Workstation (so it runs in the system tray)  a dialog asks if want to:

- Suspend
- Power Off
- Run in Background

If I "Run in Background, about an hour or so later, the guest VM is suddenly shuts down. Workstation continue to appear in the tray, but the any VMs are no longer running in the background.

This message is generated in the event viewer:

The VMware Workstation Server service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 60000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Event Info:

Log Name: System
Source: Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7031
Level: Error
User: N/A
OpCode: Info

System Info:

Workstation 16.0 Pro -
Version: 16.1.0 build-17198959

OS: Win 10 Pro 64 bit
Version: 10.0.19041 Build 19041

Full XML of Error Event:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
  <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" /> 
  <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7031</EventID> 
  <Version>0</Version> 
  <Level>2</Level> 
  <Task>0</Task> 
  <Opcode>0</Opcode> 
  <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords> 
  <TimeCreated SystemTime="2020-11-29T05:28:11.0661457Z" /> 
  <EventRecordID>20574</EventRecordID> 
  <Correlation /> 
  <Execution ProcessID="932" ThreadID="1380" /> 
  <Channel>System</Channel> 
  <Computer>Russ7.ha</Computer> 
  <Security /> 
  </System>
- <EventData>
  <Data Name="param1">VMware Workstation Server</Data> 
  <Data Name="param2">1</Data> 
  <Data Name="param3">60000</Data> 
  <Data Name="param4">1</Data> 
  <Data Name="param5">Restart the service</Data> 
  <Binary>56004D00770061007200650048006F007300740064000000</Binary> 
  </EventData>
  </Event>

[bonnie201110141]

The event viewer complains about VMware Workstation Server which is a service to run shared VM. I suppose your VM is a local VM instead of a shared VM. So this might be two different things.

When you find the VM is shut down, if you open the VM, is the VM in power-off state or suspend state? If the VM is in suspend state, it might be caused that you guest OS goes to sleep when inactive for some time. Anyway, we will try if we can reproduce the issue locally.

[russtanner]

Thanks for the reply.

When I open Workstation, the VM is in the "Power Off" state.

I have Windows 10 set to never go to sleep.

It takes only about an hour before the VM is suddenly not running.

I use VMs all the time so it's pretty inconvenient when they keep shutting down. There is no issue when putting the VMs in a suspend state, but this is more time-consuming of course.

I'll keep trying researching, but any other ideas are certainly welcomed.

[wila]

Hi,

This might not be your problem, but I know one more scenario - besides a VM going to sleep - where a Windows VM suddenly shuts down.

This also happens when windows is no longer activated. For example if you run a evaluation version of Windows and the license has expired. In that case, windows will shut down itself at regular times to remind the user to activate Windows.
Frankly a popup screen that can't be dismissed would have been easier to diagnose.

--
Wil

[russtanner]

Thanks for the suggestion.

This copy of Windows 10 is properly activated (I purchased it from New Egg) and I don't see any indication in the control panel that it's unhappy with it's status.

Thank you for the suggestion though.

Hybrid Sleep

I'm currently trying to stop aspects of Windows' hibernation/power-saving features to see if they are the cause. For example, there is "hybrid sleep" that I disabled today (even though the computer never sleeps or goes into hibernation). This apparently is a super-fast instant-wake hibernation mode that is set in the advanced power settings. I tested by starting a VM in the background after changing this setting but again Workstation shutdown the VM.

Advanced Power Settings...

I shutdown this feature...

...and Windows had no error events afterward...

...however, Workstation faulted twice, 2 seconds apart a couple hours later as shown in the Application Log (below). This is exactly how it happens every time. It's always 2 seconds apart. This is apparently when the VM that was running in the background stopped running.

Both error events below.

This is the first error event:

This is the second error event 2 seconds later:

[bonnie201110141]

Will you please enable debug mode from vm > settings > options > advanced > Gather debugging information to "Full", and attach the vmware.log when the VM shuts down?

[russtanner]

OK, I set the log to "full" and have attached the logs.

The fault occurred at 9:31 pm et (21.31.33)

2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: ----Win32 exception detected, exceptionCode 0xc0000005 (access violation)----
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: ExceptionAddress 0x7fffc345cad0 eflags 0x00010247
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: rwFlags 0x8 badAddr 0x7fffc345cad0
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: rax 0x7fffc345cad0 rbx 0x310c3c5000 rcx 0
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: rdx 0x7fffc345cad0 rsi 0x30000 rdi 0x310ceff728
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: r8 0x310ceff748 r9 0x7fffc345cad0 r10 0xffff868b95a
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: r11 0x4000000 r12 0 r13 0
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: r14 0 r15 0x310ceff748
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: rip 0x7fffc345cad0 rsp 0x310ceff598 rbp 0x7fffc345cad0
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: LastBranchToRip 0 LastBranchFromRip 0
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: LastExceptionToRip 0 LastExceptionFromRip 0
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: The following data was delivered with the exception:
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: -- 0x8
2020-12-07T21:31:33.427-05:00| mks| W003: -- 0x7fffc345cad0

[bonnie201110141]

So from vmware.log, this VM is not shut down, instead, vmware-vmx process crashed. I think the VM does not have to run in background for it to crash. You might leave the VM running with VMware Workstation UI for some time, it might crash too.

From the log, the VM is Windows 2000. Does that mean any VM in your environment will crash after running some time?

[russtanner]

OK, I tried Win 2000, Win XP, and Centos 7.5.

Both versions of Windows stopped running within minutes.

Centos hasn't stopped and is still running. I started it yesterday afternoon.

I will now try opening all the VMs and see if only the Windows VMs are affected.

It seems to only affect Windows VMs.