Windows 7 Blue screen when diconnecting mounted vmdk

[lucvdveur]

Twice today, I mounted a vmdk file of a Win7/32 VM on my Windows 7/64 Enterprise host (vmware workstation 11.1.0 build-2496824).

VMWare itself was not running at the time, I mounted it through the Windows Explorer context menu of the .vmdk file.

Mounting succeeded, the virtual disk became accessible.

I only looked at the contents, no writes should have taken place (except maybe access timestamps in the directories?)

Both times, after I was finished with it, I immediately got a blue screen "bad pool header" when I tried to disconnect it.

The virtual disk is thin provisioned, 100 GB dynamic with one 100 GB volume, formatted NTFS. There is not that much data on it, the .vmdk filesize is about 6 GB.

vmware-vdiskmanager with the -R switch found no problems in the .vmdk.

chkdsk started in the client found no errors either and reports 96 GB free.

I don't find anything about 'blue screen' combined with 'disconnect' in the KB or in these forums.

Is it something other people have experienced too, or am I being struck by something unique to my (host) system?

[rachelsunsm]

Thanks for using WS.

were you using GPT partion for volume?

there was a known issue for GPT partition. When you try to disconnect the GPT parted from windows host, it will cause the HOST BSOD.

Thanks,

Rachel

[HuanguoZhong]

Welcome to community, thanks for your response, we already have one defect to track this issue.

[lucvdveur]

Thanks for answering.

The virtual disk is MBR with one 'simple volume' primary partition, but the .vmdk file resides on a GPT disk connected to the host.

Is that what you meant, or was the known issue happening if the virtual disk itself is GPT formatted by the guest?

[rachelsunsm]

Actually I tried the following scenarios, they all can cause BSOD:

1. if the disk is dynamic disk even you use MBR to parted it, after map then try to disconnect will cause the host BSOD

2. if the disk is Basic and use GPT to parted it, after map then try to disconnect will cause the host BSOD

3. if the VM is using EFI it will cause BSOD when you try to disconnect it.

4. there even was a bug just mentioned BSOD random....

I don't have chance to try a vmdk on a GPT partition yet.....

I really hope these issues can be fixed soon, but for now the more safe way is to use a basic disk and MBR to parted your disk.

[rachelsunsm]

I will try your scenario, and give comments on the BSOD bug.

Thanks,

[lucvdveur]

Thanks again.

It is the first scenario: MBR disk, but dynamic.

It is no big problem, I don't really need to map it. I just did that yesterday to check something out, because I thought it would be faster than booting the guest.

[Martijn_Groothu]

I'm having the exact same issue.

I have version:

When I connect this virtual disk I can browse it but as soon as I disconnect I get a BSOD BAD_POOL_HEADER:

On other weird thing is when I try to attach the disk I need to select number 3 to have it connect to OS disk although you would expect number 4.

[GoGo2222]

Same issue here - VMWare Workstation 10.0.7 build-2844087 and Windows 7 64bit. Old thread but without any resolution ...

[GoGo2222]

Ok, I found solution myself. Other posts were recommenidng installing VMWare Workstation 10.0.1 but in my case the error was still there.

I later found out that I the disk had 3 partitions (FAT - EFI boot manager and 2 HFS+ (MacOS) partitions ... ). Mounting and Disconnecting the 1st FAT partition was working fine -> so I suspected the virtual disk drivers. Analyzing the BSOD I found out that vstor2-mntapi20-shared.sys (VMware vCenter Converter Standalone VMware Virtual Storage Volume Driver 5.5.0 build-1297193) is in the stack of the BSOD. Thus I tried tu update the vstor2 driver and this solved my issue.

1) run sc stop vstor2-mntapi20-shared

2) download VMWare VDDKs 5.5, unpack the 5.5 zip file (VMware-vix-disklib-5.5.0-1284542.x86_64.zip) and run vstor2uninstall.bat in bin directory

3) Restart Windows

4) downloaded the latest VDDK 6.5.2-E2 (VMware-vix-disklib-6.5.2-7387093.x86_64.zip) and run vstor2install.bat

Now the HFS+ partitions disconnect works fine and I am able to see (Read-Only) HFS+ partitions of my VMDK file (having snapshots)

Note: To be able to read the HFS+ partitions of the Mapped Virtual Disk Partition I had to install BootCamp drivers (Read-only) as described here: Apple HFS+ Windows Driver (Download) | MacRumors Forums (BootCamp 5 drivers downloaded from here https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B11SogrqPS-DRXl0M3BoMTE0UzA )