VMware tools 12.3.5 BSOD

[AleksandraTdr]

Wondered If anyone else noticed that the VMware Tools 12.3.5 version are causing BSODs on Windows servers?
Either with ATTEMPTED_SWITCH_FROM_DPC(2019, Build 10.0.17763, caused by hall.dll. or nskrnl.exe) or KERNEL AUTO BOOST LOCK ACQUISITION WITH RAISED IRQL(2016, version 1607, Build 14393.6452 nskrnl.exe)
With the 2nd one only if you disconnect the VMXNET 3 adapter from vcenter you can get into Windows, otherwise it immediately crashes into a perpetual BSOD. 

Also on the 2nd BSOD, you have to both uninstall the network drivers and uninstall vmware tools to a lower version for the BSOD to stop.

[pcgeek2009]

The only issues I have seen with this version of tools seems to be on VM's with only 1 CPU. I have seen issues where when upgrading, the server seems to do a BSOD or something that seems to force a restart. The server may then come back up fine, the tools may or may not be installed at all. There have been 2 VM's that did not recover, but fortunately I had a snapshot to roll back to. If any of these have only 1 CPU, you may want to add another to see if that resolves the issue. 

[steve_goddard]

Thanks for reporting.

It would be great to get a memory.dmp of the crash.

There are 2 options to retrieve this, 

1. Disconnect the VMXNet3 adapter and get the memory.dmp  from C:\Windows folder. You might need to add a second network adapter (non-VMXNet3) to get the dump off the VM,
2. for the a perpetual crash on restart, then taking a memory snapshot of the VM when you hit the initial BSOD would be great. We would then require the vmem and vmss files from the VM and we can create a memory.dmp from those.

Looks like your suspicious of the vmxnet3 driver causing this BSOD since disconnecting allows you to get into Windows.

This only occurs since you upgraded to 12.3.5? What was the previous working Tools version?

Thanks

[AleksandraTdr]

Hello, thank you for your suggestions!

And sorry I haven't replied earlier.

Just posting so that if anyone else has this issue, has something to go on.

Actually a collegue was able to pinpoint the cause as the vnetWFP.sys driver (NSX Network Introspection Driver) within VMware Tools.

When you manually install VMware tools, it's a "Typical install" by default and this driver isn't installed, but when it's done with a complete install, it is.

A VMware ticket has been opened for this.

[pcgeek2009]

Interesting. We run NSX, so I always to do the "Complete Install" and have not seen a BSOD issue. I have only seen the tools update cause this if the VM has only 1 CPU when trying to upgrade to this version. 

[steve_goddard]

Thanks for filing a ticket. Given the BSOD description, it makes more sense that the vnetwfp driver is the problem.

I will try and track this.