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gkrueger
Contributor
Contributor

Workstation locks up and thrashes my host HDD when I plug a USB flash drive in

Has anyone else seen this issue, when I have Workstation running and minimized and I plug a USB drive into my host, a second or two later, my host HDD starts thrashing, VMWare becomes unresponsive and basically crashes and I have to kill it from Task Manager to get access to my host again.  Very frustrating.

Any tips on how to fix this or try to troubleshoot it appreciated.

-G

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

What version of Workstation here? Version of Windows? Does this happen with any USB drive or only a specific one?

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gkrueger
Contributor
Contributor

Sorry dropped off this for a while.  Daphnissov, thanks for replying and hopefully you're still around to assist.

It's VMWare Workstation 12.5.9 build-7535481.  My host is a Dell Precision 7510 Running Windows 7 - 32GB RAM.  And this happens with multiple USB drives, had it with a 2TB HDD, and a 32GB flash drive.  I've found if I'm patient and wait about 2-3 minutes, then it finishes whatever thrashing its doing and starts responding again.  And I know its not the drives or the OS, since if I exit out of Workstation, then I can plug these in and use them fine.  No thrashing.  It's just when VM Workstation is running.  I have Workstation minimized when i do this, so its connecting the device to the host.  In fact I can see the drive appear in Windows Explorer on the host just before the thrashing starts.

And assistance appreciated.

-G

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gkrueger
Contributor
Contributor

Meant "Any assistance appreciated"

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EdP2
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had a similar problem using Workstation 15. I suspect it may be related to using a Windows 10 host as I have recently noticed a lot more 'Green bar of Death' instances. I've been forced to take two measures which seem to ameliorate the problem a little, it is however still bad.

a) WS 15 offers an option to always first connect to the Windows host - take this option if available

b) Fix the Green Ribbon of death' by optimising all the folders for 'General Content' Registry fix here:

Folder Template - Default - Windows 7 Help Forums

It is possible that my Ryzen cpu may add to the problem - but I'm not sure about that aspect!

I have also disabled Windows Search just in case!

[Additional Comment]

I thought that I had addressed most of the issues until I got a lock-up late yesterday. This had all the signs of it being some form of  a race condition involving Windows File Explorer - possibly in the area of shadow copies. I know that the Acronis Backup system does not play nicely with VMware so I removed it, and today USB performance is back to the snappy state of yesteryear. I suggest you look at running software and selectively disable any that use shadow copies until you identify the bad actor.

I should add, iMicrosoft suggest the old tried and tested SFC /ScanNow and DISM routes to make sure that you have no problematic OS corruption.

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