VC Client shuts down when anything clicked

[Meatwad]

I have the latest Virtual Center client installed on an IBM X40 laptop running Vista Business x86 edition. The client start fine, but as soon as I right-click or try to do anything to an object within VC it simply vanishes. No error, the program just up and quits. Anyone else seen this, or have a suggestion on how to fix it?

Thanks!

[azn2kew]

Have you try to launch the VC client from the VC server to see if it crashed? Do you have ESX and VC server patches to the latest? Have you try to use it on Windows XP client as well? Play a little bit with testings to see where problems is than you can tackle from there.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[Meatwad]

The VC client works fine on the VC server, as well as from all our other workstations. Works fine from my Vista x64 box as well, and from another Vista x86 laptop. There's something peculiar about the X40 that I have I'm thinking, but don't know what else to check. Everything is at the latest patch level. My VC client is version 2.5.0, build 84767, as is the Virtual Center.

[Meatwad]

I can run the client just fine, and use any of the regular Windows menus, edit preferences, etc. It's whenever I try to touch anything in the object tree (servers, ESX hosts, etc) and manipulate them, the VI Client crashes and disappears.

[Meatwad]

Now the problem has spread to an XP laptop as well. The only common thread is that both lost network connectivity yesterday while running the VI client. Now whenever either machine tries to manipulate an object in the VI Client, the client just disappears.

I have also rolled my client back one revision (the initial 2.5 release) and the problem persists.

[donikatz]

I had this same problem after just upgrading to Update 1. Turns out the crashing VI Clients had the Update Manager Plugin/Client installed. I uninstalled from Add/Remove Programs and the VI Client became stable. I was then able to reinstall the plugin.

[ejward]

Check out this KB article. It worked for me.

It's KB 1004154 I don't know why the link is so long.

[RParker]

This isn't a VM Ware / VI client issue, since you are running Vista, it needs constant massaging.

2 tools you will find you need daily are: registry tool / defrag.

You need a good registry clean/fix tool. Vista makes changes to the registry, and sometimes they don't get updated properly, so you need to run the registry fix to update/fix/compress the registry.

That's where the problem is.

http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/

[Meatwad]

This isn't a VM Ware / VI client issue, since you are running Vista, it needs constant massaging.

It is absolutely a client issue, as noted above there's even a KB article discussing the issue. The problem is happening on both XP and Vista. Vista does not need constant massaging - I have been using it for 18 months and it's been rock solid.

In our case, we ended up uninstalling the VI client, then deleting the VMWare key from HKCU, then reinstalling. This fixed the issue on both XP and Vista machines. If it happens again, I'll try the KB article posted earlier concerning the DLL issues.

[benschaefer]

Hey Meatwad, have you checked your Application Log for any interesting .NET events. I'm having a similiar issue when I try to use the client on the server. I had a similar problem a few weeks ago, on a laptop that I never resolved, simply nuked XP and installed Vista and all was well. But I'm afraid a VI Server reinstall is the only solution for me.

Thanks!

Ben Schaefer

[Meatwad]

Can't say that I see any unusual .NET events anywhere (or even any usual ones!). In our case, uninstalling the VI client, then whacking the VMWare key from HKCU and reinstalling cleared it up (one XP laptop, one Vista).

[Meatwad]

It happened again this morning. This time I didn't uninstall the VI Client, but I did whack the VMWare keys under HKCU. This didn't help. However, copying the two DLLs mentioned in the above KB article did solve it this time.