VMWare Tools installation crashing

[vbwiz]

Hello,

After finished installing an ESX 3.5 U2 cluster I'm now trying to create some VM on it. I tried Windows 2003 R2 (32bit & 64bit), Windows 2008 (32bit & 64bit); each time I start the installation of the vmware tools the vm crash and reboot.

The problems seems to happen between the SVGA driver installation and the mouse driver installation; nothing is logged in the event logs.

After reboot installation "seems" (can never be sure...) ok on Windows 2003; the VMTools icon is displayed in the status bar; the mouse is working outside of the console etc... On Windows 2008 the mouse is stuck, I'm not able to repair/uninstall/reinstall the tools (says something like "the transform path is invalid")

I also noted that under Win 2003 64bit the network card is not recognized, with or without the vmxnet driver (I tried both E1000 and Enhanced vmxnet).

All the updates have been applied to the ESX cluster.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,

Gilles.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to the VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

What aspects of VMware tools are you installing? Are these fresh installs of 2003 and 2008 or are they P2Vs? Do they already have VMware tools installed?

If VMware tools is installed already you may have to completely remove them before upgrading. Should not be the case but can cause issues.

Also, you can determine exactly what is causing the problem by installing one driver at a time. That will also help debug this issue.

I would create a clean install of each. Then create a snapshot, and then install within the snapshot, that way you can get back to the clean install if something goes wrong.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[fireguy306]

I had a similar issue, it would get to the SVGA Driver and hard reset the VM. I found that upon the VM rebooting, run the Tools setup again, it completes fine with no issues.

No idea what's happening at all though.

[bkshimkus]

I had the exact same problem. After the system would reboot/crash, you could go back and do another install of the VMware Tools--that install would complete successfully.

I found that now that I'm the latest patch level on ESX 3.5U2 (build 113339), the problem is no longer present.

bks

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[vbwiz]

> What aspects of VMware tools are you installing?

I'm willing to install a typical installation without the folder sharing option;

> Are these fresh installs of 2003 and 2008 or are they P2Vs?

Yes they are fresh installs

> Do they already have VMware tools installed?

No

> I would create a clean install of each. Then create a snapshot, and then install within the snapshot, that way you can get back to the clean install if something goes wrong.

I did that; installed a fresh copy of Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise 32bits; created a snapshot after the installation finished. Started the VMWare tools installation, installed the minimum (only the "Toolbox") and ... the VM crashed.

Reverted back to the snapshot; tried reinstalling only the "Toolbox" ... the VM didn't crashed; reverted back again to the snapshot, launched a full install of VMWare Tools and the VM didn't crashed.

As a test I tried to install the tools on a Linux virtual machine (Ubuntu 8.04); the same problem happened; during the install script the machine shutted down and rebooted. I checked the logs and nothing relevant was found.

I checked ESX version of my nodes and the latest version is installed : VMWare ESX Server, 3.5.0, 113339

Gilles.

[bkshimkus]

That's odd. We had the same results as you describe with Ubuntu 8.04 installs, in terms of the host rebooting mid-way through the installation. All of our issues were resolved after applying all of the latest patches (all patches that were released on 9/18/08).

After reviewing the details of the patches, none of them clearly state that it resolves the issue we were facing, which makes it puzzling that our environment is working properly and yours is still having issues.

bks

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[vbwiz]

Ok I found where the problem is... HA !

By disabling HA before VMWare tools installation I was able to install the tools on Windows 2003 R2 (x86; x64) and Windows 2008 (x86; x64).

I still have to test under Ubuntu but I'm pretty sure HA was guilty.

Gilles.

[bkshimkus]

I spoke too soon. I tried to install the VMTools on a system that was just P2V'ed and it rebooted/crashed mid-way through the install.

I'll try your suggestion and disable HA on one of our clusters to see if that helps. After I test, I'll post the results.

Thanks for your suggestion!

bks

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[jtloser]

I am having the same problem. It doesn't matter if it is a new VM build or a P2V (tried different tools). Has anyone found the cause?

With my P2V attempts, the machine will not boot, or is EXTREMELY slow.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

[bomboletti]

Hello.

I have the same problem on our five ESX Clusters and on Cluster ower customers.

The problem ist on new installed VMs and on P2V VMs the same.

Has VMware a Problem with the new version of VMware Tools???

After we hase installed 3.5U2 with some patches we have the problems.... and they are not fixed with 3.5U3!

Can anybody help ?

[TomRalph]

I am still having this error as well.... Not only does it crash/reboot while installing VMware Tools, it does it randomly while using the VMs

[lauffen67]

I have exactly the same problem with ESX3.5 Update 3 in a VMware HA Cluster.

Windows 2003 R2 VMs crash randomly after or during VMware Tools installation. Windows 2003 without R2 component seems to not have this bug. Very strange no ????

[MightyElectro]

We are having the same issues after updated to ESX3.5U3 and U2 in an HA Cluster.

After U3 upgrade and U2 we have had problems installing Vmtools and Win 2003 all editions, Win 2008 all editions, causes crashes during instalation even if it is a P2V or clean vm install from ISO Datastore.

Lately we also have had random problems occuring when logging into a vm and seeing it did not shutdown properly and have found vmotion is causing it in most cases.

On one occasion when converting a Physical Server to a VM it cause a Host to not reboot but to not respond and made every vm crash on that host at the time, still looking to what caused this.

It's been more than strange.

Paul

[graymadder]

See my post here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/183557?tstart=15

I believe this will help your issue. It did for me.

Thanks