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bwilliamsdc
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-15-2009 10:16 PM

Workstation 5.5.9 build 126128 freezes Vista 32-bit Dell D620 host when VM powered on

Hi,

I recently installed Workstation 5.5.9 on my Dell D620 laptop (T2600 Core Duo 2.16GHz -- 4.0GB limited by BIOS down to about ~3.3GB -- latest BIOS, A10). I've tried creating VMs but whenever they're powered on, the machine grinds to a halt. Disk utilization sounds like it's through the roof; the LED is lit constantly. Not sure how high proc is because Task Manager stops reporting/responding. Have to hard-power it off to recover.

I've tried pre-allocating the VMDK disk space and not, tried Vista-experimental VMs and Ubuntu. Any thoughts? I saw some earlier posts re: SpeedStep but it looked like it applied to Workstation running on a Linux host.

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5 Replies
Scissor
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎02-20-2009 10:58 AM

I don't think Workstation 5.5.x officially supports Windows Vista for a Host OS. With that said...

Are you perhaps overcommitting your Host RAM? How much RAM are you allocating to your Guest?

Are you storing your Guests on the Host's C: drive?

Please attach the vmware.log and .vmx file from the directory containing one of your Guests.

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wolfbeast
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎02-20-2009 12:53 PM

What you might try is to set VMWare WS to keep all VM memory in RAM - especially on a laptop with usually slow HDDs and with swapping of it on, especially with Vista's memory management, it may completely choke up on trying to swap the VM memory in and out.

Hope this helps.

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bwilliamsdc
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-20-2009 03:48 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the responses. Attached are the files requested. The box I think originally I had set to 1GB, but I dropped it to 512MB (the laptop has 4GB of memory limited by BIOS/32-bit Vista to 3.25GB).

vmware-1.log
vmware.log
vmware-0.log
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bwilliamsdc
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-20-2009 03:49 PM

Couldn't attach more than 3 files -- here's the .vmx.

Windows Vista (experimental).vmx
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Scissor
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎02-20-2009 04:52 PM

I can't see anything obviously wrong. There are some interesting entries in your vmware.log though:

Feb 15 15:21:36: vmx| ACL_InitCapabilities: here 1 (bug 63252)


Feb 15 15:21:36: vmx| Msg_Hint: msg.hostw32.wrongNTversion (shown)

My suggestion would be to upgrade to VMware Workstation 6.5.1 as it officially supports Vista as a Host OS. You can download a 30-day trial if you want to try it out first.

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