Dear Community,

I am really getting desperate. For some time now, I have had the problem that guest systems with Windows 10, 32 bit (and only 32 bit!) crash when running Windows updates. I think there must be a solution for this.

First, the problem occurred in the following constellation:
Host system: Win 10 Enterprise, version 21H2, 64 Bit
Guest system: Win 10 Pro, version 21H2, 32 Bit
VMware Workstation Player 16.2.4

Everything worked fine until the September patchday 2022. With the October patches, the problem appeared for the first time and has been present ever since. The problem is always triggered by the cumulative update and manifests itself as follows. All updates are downloaded and installed. The subsequent reboot runs normally until the progress is up to 30 %, then the actual reboot of the virtual PC takes place. The light blue Windows 10 logo appears briefly and is followed by a BSOD ("SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED"), then a second reboot again with the same BSOD. Afterwards an automatic repair starts and the updates are undone. After that the VM starts again normally, but just with patch status September 2022. I have also already downloaded the current cumulative update from Microsoft's update catalog and installed "by hand", with the same result. And also the current VMware tools do not change anything.

I have now been able to reproduce this on 4 different computers in different constellations.

Tested host systems:
Win 10 Enterprise, Version 21H2, 64 Bit
Win 10 Enterprise, Version 22H2, 64 Bit
Win 10 Pro, version 21H2, 64 bit
Win 10 Pro, version 22H2, 64 bit

Tested guest systems:
Win 10 Pro, version 21H2, 32 bit
Win 10 Pro, version 22H2, 32 bit
Win 10 Enterprise Evaluation, version 22H2, 32 bit

Tested Vmware Workstation versions:
Player 16.2.4
Player 16.2.5
Player 17.0.0
Player 17.0.1
Pro 17.0.1 (30-day trial)

I just tried again a few days ago. Created a new VM with the current Workstation Pro 17.0.1, installed Win 10 Enterprise Evaluation, version 22H2, 32 bit in it with the ISO currently available from Microsoft (the ISO has the September 2022 patch level), with no other software installations or settings changes. Afterwards just run Windows Update and the reboot ends with BSOD again.

By the way, I don't have this problem with a 64-bit Windows as a guest system. I also can't imagine that I'm the only one who has this problem. Tips I've read about this so far (including this forum) haven't worked. Some say that the problem was solved with version 16.2.5 or 17.0.0. Others say that reducing the number of CPU cores for the VM to 1 helped. For me this does not change anything.

Does anyone have an idea or solution?