VMware Communities
jrg2
Contributor
Contributor

Why does doing a Host Security Lock corrupt all Windows 7 Guests?

This problem has been plaguing me for a while but now it costed me days of work - so I need to post.

XP x64 as the Host OS running VMWare 7.1 (tried VMWare 8, but had to downgrade to get QuickSwitch functionality - but that's another thread..)

I do a host "Lock-Workstation" (Windows+L or CTRL-ALT-DEL, Lock Workstation) all seems good until I unlock the system.

At which point all my XP VM's are just fine.

All my Windows 7 VM's are now all showing the same garbled screen and have become unresponsive - corrupted.

Why does locking up the host corrupt all the Windows 7 Guests?

FYI: Not sure if this contributes to the problem but I run two instances of VMWare Workstation one on each monitor and I run 2-3 VM's on each instance - in both instances all Windows 7 VM's get corrupted.  I've tried it with just one instance and the same problem occurs.

In case this helps, my hardware is: i7 965 3.2Ghz, 24G RAM, 3x1TB Raid 5 +, NVidea GeForce GTX 260

Hope someone else can replicate the problem?

Hope someone knows a vm-config setting to prevent this?

Thanks in Advance

J.R.

Reply
0 Kudos
2 Replies
continuum
Immortal
Immortal

you said that you get corrupt VMs but have not specified how exactly the VMs get corrupted.
Is it just the screen that gets garbled ?
Does a change of screen resolution or anything else that forces a redraw help ?


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

Reply
0 Kudos
jrg2
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, the screen gets garbled with pixels from all running Windows 7 VM's and each VM shows the same garbled screen.

The VM is no longer interactive.  Clicking, right-clicking, even sending a CTRL-ALT-INSERT does notthing.

However, doing a VM > Power > Shutdown Guest seems to do a graceful shutdown because on a restart Windows does not display the "this system was not shut down properly" start up screen.

Since this is only affecting the Windows 7 VM's and not the XP VM's I'm suspecting there is a problem with video memory relating to whatever kind of hardware acceleration is being done by VM Workstation.  And I suspect that locking/unlocking the workstation messes with this hardware acceleration.

Reply
0 Kudos