VMWare Tools causing BSOD in Win10 - Help needed

[rjcarlson49]

I have VMWare Fusion 8.5 purchased a couple of years ago. Apparently support expires after 18 months so I can't even file a support request.

Host is a MacbookPro mid-2012 Retina with expanded SSD. My Mac OS and VMWare is fully up to date.

I recently installed Win10-64 on my VM as a free upgrade. Since then I get a BSOD every time I boot the VM. It occurs about 5-15 minutes after startup. The Stop Code is Attempted Switch from DPC.

I had a great deal of trouble re-installing VMWare tools after the Win10 upgrade but eventually got it to complete. It does however, give the message (approximately) "Unable to install physical disk helper driver. Install the driver manually."

I have been unable to find ANY information about installing this driver manually. I suspect this may be the cause of the BSOD, but I cannot tell. I have been unable to find any information about "Attempted switch from DPC" either.

I found some information about diagnosing BSOD and found dumps created by the crashes, but I have been unable to find software that will interpret the dumps.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Why is the BSOD happening? How can I get software the intreprets the dumps?

Thanks, Bob

Message was edited by: rjcarlson49 - Changed title to reflect new information

[rjcarlson49]

I removed VMWare Tools and rebooted the system. It has now been up without a BSOD for nearly 24 hours. That means VMWare Tools is causing the BSOD.

It is more than a little distressing that I can no longer access support since I bought the product more than 18 months ago. VMWare support is the best I know of for any software product. It's really quite extraordinary. However, if I can't even submit a request it does me no good.

Can anyone suggest where I go next?

-Bob

[rjcarlson49]

I have now deleted VMWare from the machine and re-installed it. I then re-installed VMWare Tools. The re-install reported NO irregularities.

The crash as returned exactly like before, a BSOD about 10-20 minutes after reboot and Login.

-Bob

[bluefirestorm]

Quite doubtful that it is the VMware Tools alone causing the BSOD otherwise a lot of other users would have experienced the same problem as you have.

A couple of options to check/confirm/try:

Option 1: Verify the guest OS and hardware compatibility settings are correct

The guest OS should be Windows 10 x64 (or Windows 10 if 32-bit) - (in Settings - General - OS)

Hardware compatibility should be set to version 12 (in Settings - Compatibility)

See screenshots below.

In Workstation Pro, there has been cases where a Windows 10 VM (upgraded from Windows 7) either fail to boot or crashes during boot because the guest OS setting remained at Windows 7.

Once this all set to correctly, reinstall the VMware Tools.

Option 2: reinstall/repair Windows 10

Another possibility something went awry with the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. If option 1 was not the problem or does not fix the crashing, you could try to re-install or repair the Windows 10 using an ISO download using the Windows 10 media creation tool.

Take a full backup of the VM (not Time Machine). This will allow you to go back to a working version of the VM (even though it crashes now) in case something goes wrong with the repair/re-install.

Do not create a new Windows 10 VM as the Microsoft digital licence servers will see it as a "new machine" and will ask for a new registration/licence key. Just perform the repair/reinstall with the existing VM. Depending on the licence you have (e.g. retail licence), have the previous Windows 7 licence key in hand just in the (unlikely) case the repair/reinstall somehow re-prompts for the licence key. Generally, it should not prompt again so long as you install/repair into the same VM as the Microsoft licence servers would see it as the same machine (albeit virtual).