Workstation Pro v15.5.6 hangs after Suspend

[vmarb]

After suspending a VM the whole Workstation GUI window hangs so it's impossible to interact with any other running VMs.

The whole window needs to be killed, along with all other VM tabs, because it's unresponsive.

That sends a fault report to Microsoft after which Workstation can be restarted.

The Suspend operation presumably succeeds because after restarting Workstation the VM can be resumed.

But preventing access to all other running VMs is a really big bug  😞

15.5.6 build-16341506 on Windows 2004

[scott28tt]

How much memory is assigned to the VM? How fast can that amount of data be written to whichever hard disk you use to store your VM from processes other than VMware Workstation?

[vmarb]

It seems to hang forever, regardless of the VM memory size.

I ran "vmrun suspend file.vmx"  and both the command and the GUI window hung.

I ran procmon.exe - there was no I/O taking place, yet the CPU was about 30%

[vmarb]

The suspend operation succeeds as you can see from the log

2020-11-02T20:37:44.631Z| vcpu-0| I005: SUSPEND: Completed suspend: 'Operation completed successfully' (0)

2020-11-02T20:37:44.631Z| vcpu-0| I005: Tools: State change '5' progress: last event 2, event 4, success 1.

2020-11-02T20:37:44.634Z| vcpu-0| I005: Tools: Changing running status: 2 => 1.

2020-11-02T20:37:44.634Z| vcpu-0| I005: Tools: [RunningStatus] Last heartbeat value 11784 (last received 1s ago)

2020-11-02T20:37:44.635Z| vmx| I005: Stopping VCPU threads...

2020-11-02T20:37:44.662Z| svga| I005: MKS Win32: Disabled high resolution system timer.

2020-11-02T20:37:44.663Z| svga| I005: SVGA thread is exiting

I have a full trace from sysinternals' procmon if that would help.

Instead of killing the vmware.exe process I killed vmware-vmx.exe this time. That restored the GUI so maybe it's a temporary workaround until you can fix the bug.

What we really don't want is to suspend one VM, have vmware hang, then lose access to all other running VMs meaning they have to be forcibly killed...

[vmarb]

This is clearly a bug in VMWare. Please say how to log this as a bug because it needs to be fixed.

[theintestine]

Glad I am not the only one.  Hangs for me at 44% while suspending a VM using workstation 16.1.0 build 17198859 on Ubuntu 20.04.

30GB memory available out of 64GB.

Configured with no swap space (required by Docker).  Could that be the difference?

[vmarb]

You may want to raise that as a separate issue since (a) it's a different version of VMware, (b) it might be a different problem. Can you resolve it by killing vmware-vmx process?

In my case the suspend operation seems to complete fully (the suspended VM can always be resumed later), but the vmware-vmx.exe process hangs which causes the whole GUI to hang.  Killing the appropriate vmware-vmx process seems to be safe and it restores the GUI (after reporting a broken pipe).

[seaport243]

Any resolution yet?  I have the same problem.

[rSimoes_]

I do have the same problem but on 16.1.0

[vmarb]

Sadly the VMware Technology Network appears to be a place for customers to vent frustrations, not a place to report problems or get assistance 😞

VMware has shown no interest whatsoever in fixing this problem.

Luckily the workaround posted above seems to be relatively safe.

[UnitUniverse2]

I'm suffering the same problem either, especially in virtual WinXP(The suspended XP VM will hung for almost every waking up time(but not right after, some time will be taken)) and Fedora kde.

It takes high and very stable CPU usage when gets hung, so I guess it must be in infinite looping somewhere. I once used v12 in the same host machine and get no stuck and it looks like the problem appeared since v14.

I've noticed the problem for virtual XP(Google Chrome installed) appeared even it hasn't suspended since I tested v16. I'm not sure the issue began from v16 or v15 or even an earlier version because I rarely used the v15.

Those problems just keep firing no matter if I've enabled or disabled the 3D-acceleration function.

Well I've never reported this before because the XP OS is so old and I guess the VMware has dropped the support for that ancient stuff. But I have to use it for my clients because they have those ancient platforms either and our company promised them that our software will still be able to work on it. But if you VMware developers want to locate the problem soon then you may try building a WinXP virtual machine for debugging (I'm just say)...

[StefC1]

Hi,

I've got the same problem and it happens unpredictably. I just can't find what is different when it hangs compared to when it doesn't. Workstation Pro, 15.5.7 build-17171714, on Windows 10.

S.

[stephankl]

same here - VMware Workstation 16.2.4 on Windows 10 x64 Enterprise 21H2 build 19044.2006.

BR Stephan

[arshcaria]

This happens unpredictably in v17.0.2 as well.

Host is Windows 11 22H2 with CPU i7-11850H

The suspension operation seems to have finished successfully, because the vm can be resumed after force restarting the FROZEN vmware program.

VMware, please, fix this issue. it's been there for years.

[hugheb2]

I just started noticing this after upgrading to 17.0.2. Before that, no issues at all.

VMWare will spin and hog the CPU at random times and never let go. Can't kill it in task manager either (Windows10). I have to restart my laptop to get it back to a working state. Then it's ok for a while and then it will occur again randomly.

Ran a "repair" with the installer, same issue.

Very frustrating.

[lufinkey]

Had this issue and it turned out that storing the VM on an external hard drive is an issue. I guess windows disconnects the hard drive before sleeping or something and this totally wrecks the state of the vm