workstation crashing constantly

[electronic_ink]

Hi there. I'm running Workstation 6.5.2 on a Fedora Core 10 host with win XP service pack 2 as a guest. It has had a problem where it crashes and locks up the host too. I can still move the mouse around, but can't click on any buttons and keyboard input doesn't work. If I ssh from another machine and kill the vmware and vmware-vmx processes, I get back to my host desktop, though strangely the shift and caps lock keys don't work unless I log out and log back in (thus restarting the X server, which has somehow gotten messed up by the crash and process killing sequence).

The problem seems to occur much more often when I access a serial port via USB to serial converter. I've tried at least two brands of converter, which appear to work ok before the crashes. This has been happening since at least workstation 6.5.1 and maybe earlier; not sure what version I originally installed on this machine.

Needless to say this is very annoying and makes the product nearly unusable for what I am trying to use it for. Any ideas on how to fix it? I'm attaching my log file.

-Holly Gates

[continuum]

you use very very old virtual hardware version 4 - do you have any reasons for that ?

USB will work better if you upgrade virtual hardware to at least version 6

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VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[electronic_ink]

I'm using it because I created that VM a few years back and have it loaded with all my favorite software. It takes an annoying amount of time to install XP from scratch, add service packs, install all software, etc.

Is there a way I can upgrade that without having to create a new VM from scratch?

thanks,

-Holly

[continuum]

Yes - use MENU > VM > upgrade our change versions

I would make a backup first - as this version change also changes the virtual hardware - so you may have to add drivers ...

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VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

[electronic_ink]

I tried upgrading the virtual hardware. No help though; this problem continues to happen on a daily basis, which makes using vmware incredibly frustrating

Anyone else have any ideas?

Latest support script output attached

Thanks,

-Holly

[electronic_ink]

Duplicate after forum error, sorry

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[electronic_ink]

Duplicate after forum error, sorry

[lturkin]

Holly,

I didn't have much luck with that distro either. It sounds like you are having a video driver issue with X Server. I would either update your video driver by going to that site and installing the latest or going to a different distro all together. I would also move to VMware Workstation 6.5.2. Its a newer release. I have been using Ubuntu 9.0.4 with VMware Workstation 6.5.2 without any issues. I would recommend that.

Good Luck.

[lturkin]

Make sure you have the latest and greatest updates from the Fedora Project. If your going to stay with Fedora, have you tried their latest release yet. The are up to version 11 which was released a few weeks ago. I haven't tried it myself yet.