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.
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 ?
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.