This has now happened 3x, so I'm posting it in case someone has a suggestion.
I've been running a ubuntu linux 10.10 (kernels 2.6.37) host and windows xp64 as a guest. In trying to install or run some low-hooking software (e.g. norton ghost 15) on the guest, windows hangs. VM either puts up a message to send the log to vmware--which is the good news, because I can kill the vmware-vmx process and keep going--or it stops responding to the keyboard. The mouse cursor still moves, but doesn't select anything either in the host or guest, and I haven't yet set up a mouse chord to swith to a full screen terminal, so I'm stuck having to hard reboot the host.
Mouse and keyboard are separate usb wireless devices. I tried pulling the usb cables out, which occasionally altered a nautilus window (reflecting the removal of the drive), showing that the host os is indeed working. But user inputs are swallowed into a black hole.
Yes, I'm using patches to get vmware to compile and run (thanks again, Noel), but in case there's another trick to grabbing the machine back, I'm not sure what to do. I haven't tried telnetting or ssshing in--I've locked those ports, but will try setting that up tomorrow to see if I can kill the vmware-vmx remotely.
Cheers,
Matthew
