7.1 Less Stable Than 7.0 ?

[PnwGuy]

Is it just me or are others experiencing more stability problems under 7.1?

I literally would run 7.0 on my Windows 7 64 bit host for a week or more without a single problem or needing to close Workstation, reboot the host, or reboot (or reset) a guest VM. It was amazingly stable.

With 7.1 however, I rarely make it half a day without some fatal, or extremely annoying, problem related to Workstation. Some examples:

- I've had all of Workstation 7.1 just spontaneously close (likely crash). Poof. Gone. Taking my open VM and the work there with it.

- With 8 GB of RAM on the host I used to be able to run two VMs at once (each using 2GB), but under 7.1 it's suicide. The 2nd VM will take many minutes just to open and neither is usable after that requiring I shut Workstation down completely to recover. And I have swapping turned off in Workstation and ample max RAM allocated so it's not a swapping issue.

- My XP VM's are now experiencing random "freezes" for several seconds at a time. The host CPU (a quad core i7) is pegged at 100% while this is happening with VMware being the culprit. There's another thread on this and others are having this problem.

- I've had numerous video/refresh problems in my VMs with screens not refreshing properly--i.e. empty windows, etc.

- I've had some really weird behavior with the mouse and/or keyboard being jerky and/or unresponsive at times that requires rebooting to fix.

- I've had issues doing large file copies from a guest to the host over the network (a Windows "out of resources" error). This also requires a reboot to fix.

- I've had my entire system slow to a crawl, and waiting 30 seconds just to open the task manager, discovered Workstation is the culprit. Again, I usually have to reboot the host to get it working normally again.

- I've had Workstation completely, or nearly completely, hang just trying to suspend a VM.

My system will still happily work flawlessly for days if I never open VMware Workstation. So the host seems to be as solid as ever.

Seriously, I had none of the above problems under 7.0. And short of the usual Microsoft Windows updates, the only thing significantly different is upgrading to Workstation 7.1 and then being prompted to upgrade VMware Tools on all my VMs. Prior to 7.1, I was a huge fan of VMware and Workstation. Now I'm not so sure.

Has anyone else noticed an increase in problems after upgrading to 7.1? Should I go back to 7.0?

[JJoel42]

We believe that Workstation 7.1 is more stable than 7.0 and other users have reported great experiences with the latest version. However, I have requested that our Engineering and QA team review your post and investigate the issues you have observed. Please let us know if you can narrow down any of these issues to a reproducible case and we would appreciate posts from other users experiencing similar issues that may help us to uncover the root cause of any reocurring problem.

[admin]

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that you're having those problems! That sounds incredibly annoying!

I have a couple more follow-up questions for you:

I've had all of Workstation 7.1 just spontaneously close (likely crash). Poof. Gone. Taking my open VM and the work there with it.

When Workstation spontaneously closes, do your VMs remain running in the background? That is, are they still powered-on when you start Workstation again?

I've had some really weird behavior with the mouse and/or keyboard being jerky and/or unresponsive at times that requires rebooting to fix.

Is this weird behavior on the guest or the host? Are you rebooting the guest or the host to fix it?

I've had issues doing large file copies from a guest to the host over the network (a Windows "out of resources" error). This also requires a reboot to fix.

I've had my entire system slow to a crawl, and waiting 30 seconds just to open the task manager, discovered Workstation is the culprit. Again, I usually have to reboot the host to get it working normally again.

Closing Workstation doesn't help with this? Or is Workstation already closed at this time? If you have the tray application enabled, I wonder if turning it off helps.

If you do choose to install WS 7.0 I would be very interested to hear whether the issues you're experiencing go away. There is also the possibility that something else you did to your host around the same time as installing 7.1 is interacting with Workstation in a bad way (perhaps a configuration setting or installing another piece of software).

Thanks for reporting this. We'll definitely be looking into it!

[EdP2]

• I've had my entire system slow to a crawl, and waiting 30 seconds
  just to open the task manager, discovered Workstation is the culprit.
  Again, I usually have to reboot the host to get it working normally
  again.

• I've had Workstation completely, or nearly completely, hang just trying to suspend a VM.

While I have had none of your other stability problems, the ones bulleted above did take place in my system, and were independent of Guest OS. By setting up some monitors I noticed the following:

a) CPU usage shot up to the ceiling

b) Disk i/o was maxing out

Both of these seem to have been roughly associated with the move to 7.0. Eventually I tracked down the main cause - the Windows host file indexing process does not seem to recognise that VMWare guests have any i/o priority. I turned off Windows indexing (in particular the one that will try to poke around in vmdk contents) and responsiveness improved markedly. It is still not perfect as VMWare continues to seem 'invisible' to the Windows OS. This problem can be even worse if the guest has also been allowed to do 'indexing' as then the indexers then seem to get into a fatal embrace!

A secondary cause was my fault. I had given Windows guests too much ram. Depending on what is going in the host/guest you can get into all sorts of paging issues which hits both cpu usage and disk i/o. Shaving back on guest ram helped. More ram != better performance.

While 99.9% of VMWare 7.x is better than 6.x, host i/o does seem to be far more sensitive. Of course this could also have been caused by whatever changes Microsoft have made during the same period.

[PnwGuy]

I have a couple more follow-up questions for you:

First let me say it's impressive that VMware employees are responsive to the issues in this forum. Given the size of VMware and their huge customer base, it's all the more amazing. So thank you for offering some of the best support out there among large software vendors. I've been impressed with VMware--at least until I upgraded to 7.1.

I've had all of Workstation 7.1 just spontaneously close (likely crash). Poof. Gone. Taking my open VM and the work there with it.

When Workstation spontaneously closes, do your VMs remain running in the background? That is, are they still powered-on when you start Workstation again?

It has only happened twice, and both times I assumed everything was sufficiently unstable that I immediately rebooted the host. When I re-opened the VM, the guest OS complained it had been shut down improperly as it was doing a cold boot.

I've had some really weird behavior with the mouse and/or keyboard being jerky and/or unresponsive at times that requires rebooting to fix.

Is this weird behavior on the guest or the host? Are you rebooting the guest or the host to fix it?

It's been the guest. The only weird behavior I've seen in the host has been the extreme slowdowns (near lockups) I also reported.

I've had my entire system slow to a crawl, and waiting 30 seconds just to open the task manager, discovered Workstation is the culprit. Again, I usually have to reboot the host to get it working normally again.

Closing Workstation doesn't help with this? Or is Workstation already closed at this time? If you have the tray application enabled, I wonder if turning it off helps.

The system has been nearly locked up so it's rather painful to try much of anything. As I said, it took 30 seconds just to open the task manager. I strongly suspect if were able to kill the offending VMware process(es) the host would have recovered back to normal. But rather than wait, I simply rebooted the host. If it happens again I'll see if I can screen shot the task manager or at least write down the offending VMware process.

If you do choose to install WS 7.0 I would be very interested to hear whether the issues you're experiencing go away.

To complicate things a bit, reading the release notes, apparently some of the drivers have changed with 7.1 in VMware tools and they are not backward compatible with 7.0? So that makes going backwards a bit more of a challenge as I have many VMs I would have to figure out how to downgrade.

So, instead of downgrading, I un-installed 7.1.0 and had it remove my license and configuration files. I then deleted all the vmware folders from the system and did a clean install of 7.1.1. And so far, with only about 4 hours of use, I haven't had any problems. But it's too early to tell as 7.1.0 would sometimes run a day without any issues.

>There is also the possibility that something else you did to your host around the same time as installing 7.1 is interacting with Workstation in a bad way (perhaps a configuration setting or installing another piece of software).

I'm fairly certain that is not the case unless it was something in a Microsoft weekly update to the host and/or guest OSs. I keep the host OS very clean, lean and stable. The host does not have any antivirus software beyond the standard Windows Defender and Windows 7 Firewall. The only new applications I've installed have been in a VM here and there not on the host. I haven't changed any of the host OS settings or any hardware in a long time.

Thanks for reporting this. We'll definitely be looking into it!

And thanks again for your response and assistance. I know others are having at least some of these problems--like the random high CPU issues with XP VMs.

[PnwGuy]

Both of these seem to have been roughly associated with the move to 7.0. Eventually I tracked down the main cause - the Windows host file indexing process does not seem to recognise that VMWare guests have any i/o priority. I turned off Windows indexing (in particular the one that will try to poke around in vmdk contents) and responsiveness improved markedly. It is still not perfect as VMWare continues to seem 'invisible' to the Windows OS. This problem can be even worse if the guest has also been allowed to do 'indexing' as then the indexers then seem to get into a fatal embrace!

Interesting. Thanks for your ideas. I don't think the "fatal embrace" is an issue on my system. It was only high CPU not high file I/O when I had my system slow to a crawl. And I have indexing disabled for all but my document folders, IE, etc. The VM's have their own physical drive to optimize performance and that drive is excluded completely from the host Windows 7 indexing service (at least the box is unchecked in the config dialog).

I will, however, check the indexing settings in my VMs--especially the ones I've experienced the massive slowdowns with. I suspect some of them might be set to the defaults.

A secondary cause was my fault. I had given Windows guests too much ram. Depending on what is going in the host/guest you can get into all sorts of paging issues which hits both cpu usage and disk i/o. Shaving back on guest ram helped. More ram != better performance.

Yes, I keep reading that. Almost all of my VMs are set to 2 GB. The PC has 8 GB. I have "fit all virtual machine memory into reserved host RAM" enabled in my Workstation preferences so VMware's engine will not swap guest memory. I told VMware to reserve up to 5.5 GB of host RAM and that used to let me run two 2GB VMs at once but it doesn't work anymore even if I raise it higher. If I go below about 5 GB and try to run a 2nd VM, VMware complains of insufficient resources and won't even open the 2nd session. I use Resource Monitor on the host to watch total memory usage and have never observed a problem on the host side with heavy paging or maxed out physical RAM.

This is a double edged sword as if you set the guest RAM too low that forces the guest to do a lot of swapping, and given the lower performance of the virtual drive, that's a huge performance hit. At least with Workstation 7.0, 2 GB seemed to be the sweet spot and would even let me run 2 VMs at once as long as I didn't have anything else consuming a lot of host RAM.

In one of my VM's I'm doing development work under VisualStudio 2008 with lots going on. So 2 GB is the bare minimum to have that work reasonably well.

While 99.9% of VMWare 7.x is better than 6.x, host i/o does seem to be far more sensitive. Of course this could also have been caused by whatever changes Microsoft have made during the same period.

Thanks, that's good feedback. I was very happy with 7.0.1 and just want to get back to something resembling that. I haven't ruled out that Microsoft Update has created a new conflict somehow although I would think many would be having the same issues.

[sweed73]

Hi,

Sounds pretty nasty... Could you please list the make/model of the PC and whether you have any settings enabled/disabled in the BIOS supporting enhanced virtualization performance? How many NIC cards? Anti Virus?

[continuum]

While 99.9% of VMWare 7.x is better than 6.x,

interesting ... I would state the exact opposite if somebody asked




_________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

You also find me in the support crew of PHD Virtual Backup

[PnwGuy]

Hi,

Sounds pretty nasty... Could you please list the make/model of the PC and whether you have any settings enabled/disabled in the BIOS supporting enhanced virtualization performance? How many NIC cards? Anti Virus?

It's an Intel P55 based motherboard with an i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, single Intel NIC on the motherboard, and as stated above, no Anti Virus. Hardware virtualization is enabled. The host OS is a fairly fresh install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate with almost no added apps or services that run all the time.

The key point here is the host system is as solid and bulletproof as ever and nothing, beyond Windows Updates, has been changed. Upgrading from VMware Workstation 7.0.1 to 7.1.0, however, appears to have created the variety of problems I've outlined.

[sweed73]

Would you know if the 8GB RAM (2 x 4GB) are from Kingston or Crucial?

[sweed73]

Check your CMOS... it may be that the Win7 64bit install AND consequent upgrades did something:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121388

[PnwGuy]

>Would you know if the 8GB RAM (2 x 4GB) are from Kingston or Crucial?

Check your CMOS... it may be that the Win7 64bit install AND consequent upgrades did something:

The RAM is on the certified list for the motherboard, and before I ever installed Windows the system passed an overnight intensive memory test. It's not a bad idea, I suppose, to re-test the RAM at this point. But I've had zero problems with the system or host OS when VMware isn't running.

As for CMOS, to my knowledge A) VMware 7 won't run at all without virtualization enabled. And, B) I don't think Windows can change BIOS settings even if it wants to. But yes, virtualization is still enabled.

[PnwGuy]

I have a couple more follow-up questions for you:

I answered all your questions. Did you have any further ideas?

[admin]

>I answered all your questions. Did you have any further ideas?

Sorry for the delay, I was busy yesterday!

In any event, I didn't see any red flags. I suspect that if you're able to kill the vmware-vmx process (which would hard-shutdown your guest) during a slow period, the slowness would go away. What the other poster said about you potentially assigning too much RAM to your VMs had also crossed my mind, but you already addressed that possibility.

Let us know if your 7.1.1 install shows the same issues. All of this information is important for us to have as we continue to try to figure this out internally!

[EdP2]

"It was only high CPU not high file I/O when I had my system slow to a crawl."

Out of interest, did you check "i/o Other Bytes", and "Show Processses from All Users"? In my case it was "other i/o" that seemed to go through the roof.

I gather that this rather cryptic description covers everything from random file positioning to mouse moves, but maybe someone can explain its function better than me.

Message was edited by: EdP

I should have made clear that my vm host is Windows 7 professional, and I run a number of different vm guests (not simultaneously) ranging from Debian, through Vista and XP for development purposes. I have 8Gb of Ram. and twin Xeon processors. I have experienced mouse slowdowns/unresponsive behaviour on all the guests at least once per day.

[piggyz]

Had u tested your mem with Memtest86+? Do your system is overheating?

[EdP2]

No memory issues, page faults etc. - system is not overclocked, and is water cooled/monitored. For my situation all issues seem to be associated with "i/o other bytes", and date roughly to the change to VMWare 7.0

[piggyz]

Watercooled system means tricked system. Why just u have this problem? My system is quietly similar to yours and 7.1.1 run totally stable even with eight VM running in front and background (8 GB of memory). Look at your disk subsystems too.

PS: even if u say no page faults, my advise is to run Memtest86+ for six hours or the whole night and see the results.

[EdP2]

I'm sorry but I don't think memory fills the bill, as the symptoms only appear with VMWare and in no other program. Even highly memory intensive

graphics programs and 3D renderers show no such problems. However, I'll run memtest for a prolonged period to completely eliminate that issue.

I think the cause may lay in other areas such as my use of usb connected bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

[PnwGuy]

Out of interest, did you check "i/o Other Bytes", and "Show Processses from All Users"? In my case it was "other i/o" that seemed to go through the roof.

I should have made clear that my vm host is Windows 7 professional, and I run a number of different vm guests (not simultaneously) ranging from Debian, through Vista and XP for development purposes. I have 8Gb of Ram. and twin Xeon processors. I have experienced mouse slowdowns/unresponsive behaviour on all the guests at least once per day.

Yes I always show all processes, but thanks for the "i/o other" tip.

So even after tweaking the indexing and guest ram you're still having daily slowdowns? So far things have been better but far from great under 7.1.1. I'm having video problems in the guests (especially if a screensaver is enabled in the guest, I go back to the guest window, it exits the screen saver, and I get a completely black screen that I sometimes can't get to refresh at all). This is with the latest VMware tools video drivers.

I'm also, like you, still having random weird mouse responsiveness issues. I go to drag a scroll bar or something and it won't move for several seconds and I just have to keep trying. It's incredibly frustrating!

Again, I didn't have these problems under 7.0.1