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mlubinski
Expert
Expert

slow Windows boot after restart

Hi,

I noticed one thing. Some VM's when I restart them (within OS)after restart they load really slow. It sometimes take 20-30 minutes to process this loading bar. If I reset them in the meantime, then this VM is loading normally. I can't find anything related, and it really annoys me and our customers. Did anyone encounter this problem, and maybe knows some solution or workaround for this issue?

It happens to Windows 2008, windows 2003. Linux VMs are not impacted by this (for now I didn't see any problems with linux VMs)

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virtualfish321
Contributor
Contributor

I have this exact same issue. I would've thought that more people would've seen this. I've had this issue on different flavors of vmware, too. I started seeing it on ESXi 3.5, and now I'm on ESX 4 208167, and it's done it on both. It's funny, because if you do a reboot from within windows, it will reboot and stay in the loading bar forever. If I shut down the machine from within windows, and power it on, then it loads fine. If I kill it when it appears to be hanging during the loading bar, then turn it back on, then again it loads fine. It does this with windows 2003, 2008, whatever. (haven't tried it with linux, though). And, it's not consistent. Sometimes it will boot fine. Like I said, happens on so far two different platforms, different physical esx servers and different guests. My assumption is that it's a bug in vmware that hasn't been addressed from 3.5 to 4.0. Maybe?

Any ideas? Thanks

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joelodom
Contributor
Contributor

Dittos. I've just upgraded to Workstation 7.0. My XP VM runs extremely slow (unusable) after a restart.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

ditto to a completely different problem ???

post vmware.log - make sure no Antivirus is scanning your vmdks




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johnjnovak
Contributor
Contributor

I have also seen this problem using Workstation 7. A client windows restart is extremely slow. I have had to resort to forcing a reset of the virtual machine to get the expected speed. So far I have not lost anything. I am running a Windows 7 64-bit host.

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TackH
Contributor
Contributor

Ditto... same problem. Running on Windows 7 64bit host with an XP Pro guest. I usually see this after installing an update to the guest O/S that requires a restart. I even saw this installing VMWare tools. If I simply shut down the guest then manually restart, I don't seem to have the problem. Also, I not that if I wait a VERY LONG TIME and let the guest reboot, it still runs slow and if I try to shut it down it takes FOREVER! But related to that, I usually get a memory errror during shutdown that says it can't write to some address. Hope that helps!

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IOPSConsulting
Contributor
Contributor

This issue occurs because of changes in the architecture of certain CPUs. These changes affect the way that ESX hosts perform COW (Copy-on-Write) memory operations when using vSMP in a virtual machine. Slow reboot of vSMP virtual machines on ESX when a lot of guest memory is page-shared

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joelodom
Contributor
Contributor

It's happening to me on Workstation, not ESX.

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