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samstern
Contributor
Contributor

Internal Error when either adding a physical disk or creating a vm that has a physical disk in vmware desktop 10

Hi All,

I own Vmware 9 and am using the trial of VmWare 10. In vmware 10 when using hardware type of "vmware 10" you get an internal error when adding a physical  drive or creating a  vm that uses a physcial drive I get "internal error" and no logs that I can find are created. However if you create the vm as vmware level 9 or create the level 10 vm with a virtual disk then attach the disk, "internal error" does not occur. Once created you may attach a physical drive, or upgrade from hardware 9 to hardware 10 and use the virtual disk. If you remove the virutal dsik  and try to re add it you will again get the "internal error" alert. Once you can use it, the physical drive performs well.

Any hints on how to fix this or places to check for logs that I may be missing?

Host system:

gigabyte ga-z77x-udh5

32 gb pc 1300 memory (4 sticks of 8gb)

intel core i7 i3770 3.4ghz

nvidia gt 640 2gb

nothing is overclocked.

os - problem occurs in Windows 8x64 (not 8.1, which I've not tried), Suse 12.3 using kernal 3.4 , 3.9 and 3.10  and debian Wheezy kernel 3.2

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xishengzhang
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi, Samstern

I assume SATA virtual disk type was selected and SATA real physical disk is used by you in creating new vm or attaching the physical disk, right?

Regards

xisheng

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samstern
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, Xisheng,

The problem occurs if I chose the new SATA type or the older SCSI type. Since Sata is not present in the older vmware hardware type 9, the new disks that do work once the machines are migrated forward (or left on vmware hardware spec 9) are of type SCSI. However you can later alter this to type SATA.

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overolive
Contributor
Contributor

Has there been any resolution or progress on this?

I just tried, for the first time, to add two physical disks to a VM and received the incredibly unhelpful "Internal Error" myself.

VMware 10.0.1

Windows 8.1 host OS

RHEL 64-bit guest OS

Disks are marked offline

Ran VMware Workstation as "Administrator"

Selected "SATA", independent disk, persistent.

Two Seagate 3TB SATA disks

Guest OS is running the WS10 profile.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Hi
sometimes it helps to edit the extent description in the vmdk-files.

I assume your vmdks now look like:

# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

encoding="windows-1252"

CID=fffffffe

parentCID=ffffffff

isNativeSnapshot="no"

createType="fullDevice"

# Extent description

RW 3907029168 FLAT "\\.\PhysicalDrive2" 0 partitionUUID \\?\ide#diskwdc_wd20earx-00pasb0____________________51.0ab51#5&19f80332&0&2.0.0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024"

ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"

ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.longContentID = "45b985678abe6296c43b1b1cfffffffe"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9c f5 b2 34 f1-56 91 ed 9f af 47 24 91"

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "10"

Simplify the vmdk so that it looks like this instead


# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=fffffffe

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="fullDevice"

# Extent description

RW 3907029168 FLAT "\\.\PhysicalDrive2" 0

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024"

ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"

ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

Especially make sure that  the line starting with RW gets edited - delete everything at the end of that line starting with partitionuuid.
Do the edits when no VM is runing and Workstation is closed.
I also recommend to attach the disks as SCSI-devices - do not attach as SATA - means you want
scsi0:3.filename = "rawdisk.vmdk" not sata0:0.filename = "rawdisk.vmdk"



NEVER EVER use this edited  rawdisks when you are not absolutely sure that  "\\.\PhysicalDrive2" specifies the drive you had in mind.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

samstern
Contributor
Contributor

wow, Ill give that a try in the next day or two and then let you know if that works or not

Thanks!!

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glynor
Contributor
Contributor

I'm encountering this same error when trying to add a physical disk to an existing vmware Workstation 10 virtual machine.  The details of my system are as follows:

Host: Windows 8.1 x64 Pro

Guest: Windows 7 x64 Home

Disk: SATA disk (specifically a WD30EZRX 3TB Green drive).  The disk is not used by the host OS.

If I add the disk as a SATA type virtual disk in vmware, it seems to add properly, but I get the Internal Error popup when I click OK to close the VM Settings dialog.  If I add the disk as a SCSI-type virtual disk, then it adds properly.  I'm honestly not sure which is best, but it seemed from suggestions here and in other threads that it would be best to add a SATA disk as a SATA-type vmdk.

I was not able to try the tweak suggested by continuum because vmware Workstation won't let me add an existing vmdk that is a reference to a physical disk.  Editing it before clicking OK to the VM Settings dialog didn't help (still got "Internal Error" and was unable to continue).  If you cancel, and then edit the vmdk you have on disk now as suggested, then you aren't able to add it back into vmware Workstation because it complains that you can't add a vmdk for a physical disk and should add the physical disk directly instead.

So... Hrm...  I can add my disk as a SCSI disk, but I don't know if that could cause any trouble down the road (or performance penalties).

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ISResearcher
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, I met with the same issue, just check these settings,

Click on Edit

EDIT > Preferences > Shared VMs

click on it, check whether Virtual machine sharing is Enabled or not,

Enable Sharing

Hope it will resolve your issue sir.

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deltabravo1
Contributor
Contributor

I too had this same problem in Windows 10 (host) with a Linux Ubuntu Desktop VM/Guest.  In my configuration, per recommendation by default, the boot drive is a virtual drive setup as a SCSI virtual disk.  When I tried to add SATA, physical disk, it gave me the "Internal Error" with no other info.  After reading this post and thinking about it, maybe the mix of SATA physical and SCSI virtual is causing VMware workstation some issues.  So, I created a physical disk as a SCSI (the recommended default) and was able to save and see the disk (as a secondary drive, which is what I wanted), in the Linux Guest OS.  Hope this helps someone else.

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