vmWare Workstation 12.5.7 BSOD UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION

[trevwhite]

Hi vmWare are there any known problems with vmWare workstation 12.5.7?  I keep having problems with Windows 10 x64 HOST having a blue screen with UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION, this only seems to happening when running multiple vmWare workstation machines, typically this is a Ubuntu LTS Server image and a Windows XP Pro image.

I think the issue is around the Windows XP Pro image, because I don't seem to get the issue when this one isn't running.

I've updated all drivers, the virtual machines are running the latest vmWare tools and this is really starting to drive me crazy, is there anything that can be tweaked to improve stability?

The HOST system is also running McAfee Viruscan Enterprise 8.8.0 / McAfee Host Intrusion Prevention 8.0 (all file types are scanned), the laptop is a brand new HP Zbook 17 G3 running Windows 10 x64 as mentioned, however my old laptop which was Windows 7 x64 had simular blue screen issues and it's a completely new baseline image, however at the time I put this down to the previous laptop being told, it's not possible for me to turn this off, however I could ask for certain files to be excluded from the scan if absolutely necessary, it's a corporate machine but I do have admin rights on it, but cannot configured the viruscan software.

Looking forward to any advice, plan B is to try VirtualBox, but I'm trying to avoid doing this.

No memory dump file is written even though it's configured.

Thanks again.

[bluefirestorm]

The name of the exception would suggest something related to storage device(s); although I cannot say with 100% certainty.

Is(are) the VM(s) stored on external USB drives?

Is the XP VM also part of corporate domain where GPOs are enforced?

I am wondering if the BSOD is a delayed reaction to a delayed enforcement of a GPO related to external/removable storage devices. For example, there is a GPO that allow removable storage such as USB drives to be attached but make them read only. As to VMs, this can make certain disks in the VM to appear to be read only.

If you are running the VMs off external drives, perhaps try running within the local drive of the ZBook itself.

As to the XP VM, if it is a member of a domain, there could be virtual disks that could be seen as "removable". You can add the line

devices.hotPlug = "FALSE"

to the vmx of the VM. Maybe for XP VMs, it isn't so obvious. But for Win 7/8/10 VMs, without that line a bunch of devices become "Ejectable" including boot C drive that is a SCSI disk. A GPO that enforces readonly for removable/ejectable disks would obviously have an undesirable effect on the VM.

[trevwhite]

Hi bluefirestorm​

Many thanks for the reply, I removed all USB drives as a part of my debugging process (before OS boot), and haven't plugged any in to rule this out, the VMs are all running off local storage 1Tb SSD.

The XP VM is just a Windows XP Pro standard install, no domain has been set, it just allows me to run testing in an isolated environment.

[continuum]

> it's not possible for me to turn this off, however I could ask for certain files to be excluded from the scan if absolutely necessary
Did you create an exception for "vmdk" files ? - if not - create one