Guest Video/DWM Crashing, Black Screen Flicker in Workstation 17

[VMware Community Member]

I recently ordered a new computer (With an Intel Raptor-Lake i7-14700K) and installed Windows 11 on it. Once everything is updated (drivers, BIOS, etc) I installed VM Ware Workstation 17 on it and started to use it.

However I couldn´t install Windows 11 or 10 as a guest OS (old VMs from my old PC are as well not working) because during the installation from the guest OS the screen started to switch between a picture and a black screen every 2-3 seconds. On a older machine I moved to the new PC I was directly send back to the login screen once I managed to login.

Further indication showed that some parts of the OS are constantly crashing as the eventlog was full or errors:

• The Desktop Window Manager process has exited. (Process exit code: 0x000000ff, Restart count: 4, Primary display device ID: Microsoft Basic Display Driver)
• Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.19041.3636, time stamp: 0x6e55ef4a
  Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.19041.3996, time stamp: 0xb756c9ff
  Exception code: 0x8898009b
  Fault offset: 0x000000000012d952
  Faulting process id: 0x18f8
  Faulting application start time: 0x01da7ddb6400afe8
  Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\dwm.exe
  Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
• Winlogon in session 3 (console) reuqested session stop using GPU, returned status {Operation Failed}
  The requested operation was unsuccessful., with progress stage of no display adapter found

So I started to troubleshoot the situation. I tried different solutions:

• Reinstall Host OS
• Repair VMWare
• Install/Remove VMP
• Disable "Accelerate 3D Graphics"
• etc

However none from the above solved my issue. I then stumbled across an old posting mention that it might be solved when using only one CPU. So I changed the Guest OS to use only one CPU and one Core and the Screen flicker and the crashes are no longer happening to me. I can also reproduce the issue with one CPU and 2 Cores. The only situation in my case is one CPU and one Core. All other settings are causing the crashes mentioned above.

Is somebody having such issues as well and might have a better option as the workaround mentioned above? The one CPU and one core is causing a bad performance in the guest.

[Dhairya Tomar]

 Unable to reproduce the issue on Raptor Lake  with I7 processor machine with Windows 11 as Host, I was able to install Windows 11 as Guest without any screen flickering to Black.

Ticket has been raised internally, relevant team will look into the same.

Requesting you to share support bundle of the affected VM here in this thread using below steps-

Help->Support->Collect Support Data 

[VMware Community Member]

sure, here are the logfiles for a plain windows 11 guest. Please keep noted that I couldn´t change anything inside the guest as the issue mentioned above is preventing me from logging into the guest. The 1 CPU workaround isn´t working for Windows 11 because of the OS requirements.

I will also attach some logfiles from a windows 10 guest where I can manage a stable situation with only one CPU. However when I change the machine to use two CPUs, I have exactly the same issue as with the windows 11 machine.

thanks for the help so far

Attachment(s)

Windows10_Crash_with_2CPUs.zip   3.37 MB 1 version

Windows11_Crash_with_2CPUs.zip   4.71 MB 1 version

[Matt Banack]

Hi BastianF,

It sounds like you're seeing the same symptoms during (or shortly after) OS install, before you have VMTools installed, is that correct?

In your Win10 log, I see VMTools 12.3.0 is installed and it's running with 2 VCPUs.  So this log was for the 2 VCPU configuration where it crashes, but if you reduce it to 1 VCPU for this same VM it works?

It might be worth taking a snapshot of your Win10 VM that works with 1 VCPU and then uninstalling VMTools as an experiment (and then re-configuring to use 2 VCPUs again).  That should give us a better idea where the issue is coming from.

[VMware Community Member]

I can reproduce the issue via Windows 10 and Windows 11:

Windows 11: As I couldn´t install the OS with only 1 vCPU due to the requirements I wasn´t able to install the VMWare Tools. During the first initial Login the DWM is constantly crashing and sending me back to the login screen every 2-3 seconds. There is no way to perform any kind of login.

Windows 10: Similar to Windows 11. However it allows me to install it with 1 vCPU. But when I change the setup to a 2 vCPU configuration, I have exactly the same issues as with Windows 11 (means the login screen shows only some seconds then the screen went black, maybe I can capture that as a movie). But as Windows 10 allows me to use it with 1 vCPU I was able to update the OS fully and also install VMWare Tools. But as soon as I change the vCPU from 1 to 2 I have the same issue. So for me there seamed to be no difference if the OS is fully patched and/or the OS is updated. I also tried to install the latest VMWare display driver which was/is announced via Windows Update.

For me it looks like more an issue inside VMWare or some problems with the host (however the host itself is working without issues)

Give me some minutes to start the Win10 VM with one vCPU. Then I will uninstall the Tools and collect some logfiles when it start crashing again using 2 vCPUs. Then I will upload the logfiles here as well.

Update: I attached the mentioned logs to this posting.

Attachment(s)

vmsupport-2024-03-26-22-45.zip   3.61 MB 1 version

[Dhairya Tomar]

 Can you add this parameter in the vmx file of the affected VM- "monitor_control.disable_apichv=1" and let us know the behavior.

[VMware Community Member]

for me this issue looks more an general issue, because I now managed to got my hands on a brand new "HP Z2 G9 - i7-13700" Workstation (HP Windows Image, I only performed a Windows update and the System downloaded automatically all HP updated, no other changes on my side) and there I can as well reproduce the issue (similar like on my master system mentioned above). On the HP system I downloaded VM Workstation 17 directly from the VM website and activated it via the trial option. I as well downloaded the recovery ISO for Windows 11 directly from the Microsoft website. This should avoid that its something on my sources which is causing the issue. However I still see exactly the same issues as on my primary environment.

On both systems the monitor_control.disable_apichv = "1" do not help, it seamed there is absolutely no difference if the value exists or not. As I´m currently using the HP Z2 workstation I will upload the logfiles from that system here as well. The monitor_control.disable_apichv = "1" is enabled in the logfiles. Please keep that in mind when you work with the logs as they might see a different system now.

 

Attachment(s)

vmsupport-2024-03-30-21-38.zip   1.66 MB 1 version

[Matt Banack]

Hi BastianF,

 

I don't see the monitor_control.disable_apichv config set in the win10b VM from your 2023_03_30 support bundle.  Can you make sure you apply that VMX config with the VM fully powered off?

The second system also reproducing this is a useful datapoint.  We're doing some internal followup.

[VMware Community Member]

&  

thank you for your support so far. I solved the issue via (run CMD as Admin):

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

once rebooted the problem no longer appear. You can reproduce the issue when you set (run CMD as Admin)

bcdedit /set useplatformclock yes

once rebooted you can reproduce the issues in VMWare.

Maybe this could be somehow documented on VMWare side as it took some days to nail it down. By the way I´m not sure how the value came to my system as only drivers and windows updates where installed. But as I lost already some workdays I couldn´t spend more time into finding out how the setting was applied to the OS (if I ever could).

So for me the issue is solved. I can power up any machine I had and still see no crashes.

So, solution for me was:

1.) run CMD as Admin

2.) enter "bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock"

3.) reboot

 

[Matt Banack]

Hi BastianF,

Glad to hear you got unblocked.

Just to confirm, did you set this bcdedit config on the host?

[VMware Community Member]

hi ,

the value (useplatformclock yes) was set on the Host (not on the Guest System) where VMWare Workstation is installed on. Please keep noted that I actively didn´t set that value. It must be a 3rd party software or a driver which did that.