Workstation 17 guests hanging

[michaeljf]

I was previously using Workstation 12 on a Windows 2012R2 host with no performance or instability issues.  I am now testing Workstation 17 running on a Windows 11 (32G RAM) host and finding that Workstation is intermittently hanging and in some cases crashing.  It is unclear (so far) if the problem is related to a particular VM or Workstation itself or maybe the machine (physical machine).  I don't see much of anything useful in the logs. 

When the guest (also Windows 11) goes into this hung/stalled state I can see no obvious issue on the host.  Meaning there is no excessive memory, CPU, network, or disk usage.  Because the issue also seems to happen with other VMs, I am inclined to not blame the VM, but rather Workstation or possibly the host.

I have reviewed this other thread, but solutions suggested there don't seem to help.

• No USB devices connected to guest
• Accelerate 3D graphics, disabled
• AutoProtect, disabled
• No mapped drives connected to guest
• 8G memory on guest, 32G on host

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot such an intermittent issue?

[Ferko]

Hi,

It may be the same issue with Hypervisors I am experiencing and discussing:

Vmware 17 Pro very slow on Windows 11 22H2 

If it is so, then it occurs only in the latest W11 22H2 (as host) and maybe only on some CPUs as some of my friends do not experience it. Check the workarounds there if they help you. There is a new patch for Vmware 17.0.1. Maybe they fixed it. For me I stay on older version of Windows for the time being until Vmware Workstation is properly fixed.

[_Royce_]

I'm going through something very similar. Although I'm running WS 17 on Windows 10 not 11. The VM I'm testing ran flawlessly for many years on WS 12 (running on Linux host). I'm wanting to move it over to a new Win box but so far WS 17 just isn't working and no idea where to start as the log doesn't help at all. 50% of boots don't get past hardware check (NT4 guest).

Did you get anywhere with your issues?

[_Royce_]

I found my issue - it was remnants of Hyper-V. I previously tested Hyper-V before VMware 17. Even though i removed the Hyper-V role, it was still active. Was a real PITA to get rid of it but i did and then reinstalled VMware 17 and now i'm not experiencing any boot issues with the NT4 guest.