VI client connection never completes but never fails

[chrisy]

I'm sitting looking at the VI Client saying 'loading inventory' and spinning its animated icon. Based on past tests I can leave it like this all afternoon and it won't log on.

Suggestions welcome! Here's some clues:

Behavior is the same connecting to both VC, and to ESX servers (3.0.2) directly.

The VI log file has no errors.

Network speed and pings are fine, other computers can connect fine.

It's a problem local to this computer not the network or site generally.

Windows firewall is off.

Granted, the computer is running Vista, which I know isn't supported. However there's plenty of postings here that say that apart from display bugs and template issues, it works. Well, mine doesn't!

I've tried 'run as admin' and 'XP compatability mode', no difference.

The last line of the VI Client log was written many minutes ago, and says something like

\[Quickinf] destroyed managed object vim.licensemanager.

In fact there's a whole block of 'destroyed....' log lines; seems odd to be destroying at logon, I'd have expected 'created' to be more appropriate.

I've turned on more logging detail, based on a VMworld presentation I saw on the web. I now have great blocks of XML dumped into the logfile but still nothing that looks like an error, and still no logs written during the endless wait.

There seems to be little or no network activity while it's waiting.

I have a wild guess it's somehow a network issue, but am unsure what to test at this point.

\--

Chris

[FredPeterson]

VirtualCenter requires connecting over two different ports, 80 and 902.

When you're trying to connect, do you see it attempting to connect to the VirtualCenter servers IP on both of those ports?

[Jae_Ellers]

I run Vista 64 with VC 2.0.1p2. It works fine. I had to tweak the registry to get my guest customization wizard to work, but otherwise have had no issues.

Can you connect fine from other systems?

Are you in the local admins group on the system?

Do you have any firewall software loaded on the client or server system?

[chrisy]

netstat shows established connections on port 80 and 902.

I can connect fine from a wide variety of other systems, I'm a local admin, Windows firewall is fully disabled and there's no other firewall software on client or server.

I've also set Vista to 'run as admin' the Vi client - it's a strange Vista-ism that being local admin is not enough any more, you have to explicitly tell Vista to use admin privs sometimes.

It's Vista 32-bit, and I've seen the VI client working at other sites on Vista. However, as installed on a couple of Vista machines here, it doesn't want to cooperate.

I've tried it over the local LAN and over VPN. Interestingly the VPN software reports traffic ceases what the VI Client starts 'loading inventory'.

A 'helpful' colleague installed .NET 1.1 on the computer as the VI Client asked for it. I'm not at all sure that's appropriate for Vista, but it doesn't seem to have broken anything obvious elsewhere.

The computer is a new purchase from Dell; I wonder if Dell have done something strange but I can't imagine what would produce these symptoms.

\--

Chris

[Jae_Ellers]

I also installed .Net 1.1 and the sp1 for it.

At this point I think I'd uninstall the VIC & .net 1.1 and reboot.

Install .Net 1.1, install the sp1 for it, plus the security patches. Then install VIC and see what you've got.

[marvinthebassma]

Hi,

what do you mean with "tweak the registry" : did you changed something on the VC server ? or inside the Vista Guest OS ?

We need 64bit Customization for RHEL .

Thanks in advance

Martin

[Jae_Ellers]

By tweak the registry I mean that I needed to export the timezone settings from the registry from an XP machine and import them into my Vista-64 box. Then the guest customization wizard worked for Windows.