Why am I seeing a guest OS (and VM) pause (lockup) for minutes a time?

[Clasmir]

Given:

1) Windows 7 OS guest

2) Installed workstation pro 12 (not 12.5)

3) Created and installed a windows 10 VM.

Problem:

For some reason I periodically see huge system wide (windows 7 and windows 10) pregnant pause(s). These are lockups that eventually free up and the system stutters along. As soon as I exit the windows 10 vm the problem goes away.I had thought it might be a tcp/ip timeout but the fact the whole windows 7 system becomes unresponsive for most actions... is a mystery.

Something within the windows 10 vm and its interaction with the guest windows 7 is locking up both systems. I can move the mouse but clicks to get action do nothing on almost all components (but not all)

Any idea what I can investigate?

[louyo]

You don't give much info to go on. Host OS? Memory? etc.

1. check memory allocation and make sure neither host or guest is running out.

2. Start with 1 cpu and 1 core and only add if necessary.

3. Put the guest on a different disk than the host. SSD or striped RAID preferable.

My experience points to disk performance and Windows single threaded programs.

Lou

[Clasmir]

Thanks for the reply. I guess I'm not using the right terminology. The host OS is windows 7.

All of your points are reasonable but don't apply for this instance. Its an engineering laptop with 32gig of ram, a single samsung 850 Pro. I've setup the VM (windows 10) with varying amounts of ram and VCPU threads.  It only seems to change when the problem occurs, which makes me think its random.

What this smells like is a driver / interrupt hang. Its that bad.

I had hoped this was bug or issue that someone would recognize.

[dariusd]

Even though the host OS is different, does the following post help at all?  Windows 10 Forums - Samsung 850 pro Compatibility issues with Windows 10?

The interesting part of that thread:

I was able to correct my Samsung 850 Pro from freezing up by turning off the ALPM setting in the Intel drive controller manager settings. Seems that the Samsung SSD's do not like that setting.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[Clasmir]

Thanks for the reply. I must be missing something. The hang I notice is ONLY when vmplayer or vm workstation is running the windows 10 container. It just happened again.

I have an instance of Oracle VM Virtual box with the same version of windows 10 and so far I've yet to see the problem.

I am leaning towards a vmware driver hanging interrupt.