VM causes host to start freezing at seemingly random intervals.

[Filiecs]

I have recently started using VMware and have really enjoyed it thus far.

However, it seems that my Linux Mint 19 virtual machine will occasionally flash in the taskbar as if it was trying to notify me of something and then almost immediately begin causing my entire Windows 10 computer to begin skipping. I need to forcibly kill the VM and VMWare with the Task Manager, which is very difficult when your computer is chugging.

Lowering the number of resources the VM could use helped a bit when needed to kill the process, but it shouldn't be causing these random freezes in the first place.

Sometimes this happens after only 30 minutes of use, sometimes this doesn't happen or many many hours, and I have yet to find a predictable cause.

Could someone tell me where I can find logs that may explain the issue or if this a known issue, and how to resolve it?

[Scott Vessey]

Version of Workstation?

Host CPU and memory?

VM CPU and memory?

[Filiecs]

VMWare Workstation Pro: 16.0.0 build-16894299

Host CPU: Intel Core i7-7700k @ 4.20GHz - 4 cores - 8 logical processers

Host Memory: 48 GB

VM CPU:

     # of processors = 1

     # of cores = 6

VM Memory: 32 GB

I'm not sure if I configured the CPU right. The instructions on how to set it relative to your own CPU weren't very clear.

[Scott Vessey]

Does your VM need 6 vCPUs and 32GB of memory?

The usual logic is to configure only the compute resources that will allow your guest OS and applications to run to the level of performance you desire - so if your VM will do what you want with 2 vCPUs and 8GB of memory then just allocate those (or even less).

Not saying this will resolve your issue here, but you asked for clarity on the "right" configuration.

[Filiecs]

I would like my VM to perform as quickly as possible and have the ability to use the majority of my host OS's resources without degrading the performance of both. I do a lot of general usage activity paired with heavy software compilation on the VM for my work.

[Filiecs]

It just happened again and, it's odd, I do not see a spike in CPU or memory usage in Task Manager during the slowdown. I do, however, see a huge spike in disk usage.

This is especially to see it reach so high odd considering I have many RAIDed SSD's.

Now that I think about it, I do not remember having this issue before I migrated my computer to a different RAID array.

Before, my computer had 4 drives in a RAID 10 array. Now it has 6 drives in a RAID 0 array. I am unsure if this could have anything to do with it.

[Filiecs]

I think I figured it out! I am pretty sure that it is AutoProtect that is causing the slowdown!

I have a massive VM, so it's not quick to backup.

Is there a way to confirm this or some way for me to make it so that autoprotect uses less resources but takes a bit longer?

[Scott Vessey]

AutoProtect means lots of snapshots: Configuring AutoProtect Options for a Virtual Machine

I‘ve never seen any VMware product have options to limit the resources consumed during the snapshot creation process.

One other comment worth making, there are many posts appear in these forums where snapshot chains get broken which can render VMs unusable, where restoring from a backup can be the only way of recovering the VM.

If you do use a lot of snapshots, take regular backups. Don’t use snapshots AS backups.

[Filiecs]

An update on this.

I disabled AutoProtect but it does not seem to have fixed my issue, unfortunately.

I am still getting the occasional freezing of the host system that takes forever to force quit from, and interrupts my work.

[andreaplanet]

If too much RAM is requested by the operating system (Guest or Host whatever) then swapping starts to occur which will freeze your system.

Under Edit - Preferences - Memory, did you enabled "Fit all virtual machine memory into reserved Host RAM" ?

When there is a freeze how much RAM is used/free by the Guest at that moment?

How much RAM is used/free by the Host at that moment?

[Filiecs]

Under Edit - Preferences - Memory, did you enabled "Fit all virtual machine memory into reserved Host RAM"

I did not have this enabled. Thank you, I will try this out and report if I still get the issue.

[Filiecs]

Unfortunately, the issue is still happening. I am unsure what s causing it.

[Yan Li]

1) What is your host OS version? If it's not Win10 2004, could u upgrade it to the latest and retest again?

2) How about if you disable the tool "Defragment and Optimize driver" on host if it's on?
3) Does the issue happen after running for a long time? Or within the few minutes after VM startup?

Best Regards,

Yan

[Filiecs]

1. It is Windows 10 2004

2. I can try, but it looks like the last time it was run was 5 days ago. I have had it happen much more often than once a week.

3. Both, and in-between. It's very inconsistent. Sometimes it will happen a few minutes after launch, other times it will not happen for 9 or more hours, sometimes after an hour.

It happens both when I am actively using the VM as well as when I just have it running idle in the background. vmware-vmx.exe is the executable that is causing the issue.

[Yan Li]

>3. Both, and in-between. It's very inconsistent. Sometimes it will happen a few minutes after launch, other times it will not happen for 9 or more hours, sometimes after an hour.

It happens both when I am actively using the VM as well as when I just have it running idle in the background. vmware-vmx.exe is the executable that is causing the issue.

I have same experience with you. I hit this issue one or twice before, but after host restart, it can not reproduce consistently. Sometimes it happens in few minutes after VM startup, sometimes it did not happen after running 2 days. When the issue happen, I can see the CPU and memory usage is not high on host. The only noticeable thing is the disk, it shows speed 50MB/s with the vmx process. Maybe windows is doing something update.

So the last try is to disable Hyper-V, and see if it still happen?

Thanks,

Yan

[ITKSecurityGmbH]

Hi there,

I seem to be facing the exact same problem. As far as I can tell, it started after upgrading to VMware® Workstation 16 Pro 16.0.0 build-16894299.

It worked fine for months in the exact same configuration. After upgrading to 16894299 my host will sometimes run smoothly for a couple of days, sometimes for 8-10 hours and sometimes it freezes after just a few minutes.

When VMWare Workstation is not running, no issues occur.

I have htop running on my host console, whenever this freeze happens, cpu, mem and so on are nowhere near any limits. With all guests up and running, it looks kind of like this:

(attachment)

host configuration:

• Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia
• CPU: 8-Core Intel Xeon E-2288G (-MT MCP-) speed/min/max: 800/800/5000 MHz Kernel: 5.4.0-52-generic x86_64 Up: 1d 20h 50m
  Mem: 22699.5/63943.7 MiB ECC (35.5%) Storage: 5.92 TiB (95.4% used) Procs: 500 Shell: bash 4.4.20 inxi: 3.0.32

guest configuration:

(attachment)

AutoProtect is off.

I have the "feeling" it might have something to do with mapped USB devices, especially a headset for use with Dragon Naturally speaking (IMPACT D 10 USB ML - EU EPOS I SENNHEISER). But that's not based on facts, just my imagination.

Any help very much appreciated.

Best regards

Patrick

[ITKSecurityGmbH]

Solved.

After this happend on vSphere as well, we did some deep analysis and found out that VMware seems to have a bug regarding USB implementation in the current versions.

After switching USB devices to a network USB switch, everything is working just fine.

For your reference: I am using this model https://www.wut.de/e-53663-ww-dade-000.php

Best regards

Patrick

[Drewpeanuts-19]

I'm having the same issues and I'm not sure what you're referring to as the solution. 

 

My VMs will freeze randomly. When I suspend and resume the machine it shows my seemingly frozen VM was capturing keystrokes but not seen in console until I resumed the VM. 

32gb ram, i7-11 gen processor, 3060ti, 2tb SSD sata 

[John_Deg]

Hi there,

Same problem here, vm freezing for about 40sec to 60 sec.

Workstation 16 Pro, 16.2.0 build-18760230 (last version for october 2021).

Vm Ubuntu 20.04, no usb, 1 processor 8 cores, 16Gb Ram.

My host as a AMD Ryzen 7 3700X with 32Gb Ram.

The freeze start with Pro 16 and get worst...

I have diminished ram to 8G, nothing changes.

Don't have any snapshot and auto-protect is disabled.

The vm is encrypted and protected by password and has 5 disks (40Gb - 30Gb - 60Gb -  10Gb - 60Gb)

When freezing, no big activities on the vm and host.

This is really anoying, freezing happens randomly and more than 1 time/hour.

[soywiz2]

Me too.

In my case AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 32GB of RAM.

Allocated 16Gb to the guest.

Using Workstation 16 Player: 16.1.1 build-17801498

[aussieklutz]

We had some issues recently, and some of us disabled Virtualisation Based Security (VBS) on our hosts, by disabling HyperV Virtualisation in BCDEDIT. So long as those people booted without HyperV, they avoided the issues.... Until policies were applied to enforce VBS...

[Filiecs]

For me, I found that the issue was due to the number of snapshots I had accumulated.

VMWare apparently checks against all previous snapshots, and the freezing can happen if the delta becomes too large or something like that.

VMWare apparently recommends no more than 4 snapshots.

After reducing my number of snapshots, I am no longer encountering any issues.

[Isaac Moreno]

I just found this thread as I have the very same problem, but it is now 2025...

My Vms tend to freeze randomly. I have been through the conversations, and:

-I have no USBs causing problems. I have several VMs at the same time and some freeze, other not, randomly.

-I have 64GB or RAM, and half of it available, so it is not a RAM issue.

-~VmWAre is 17.6.4 build-24832109, Workstation PRO.

-I have autoprotect, maybe some of the freeze happen when autoprotect is on... but I have not observed this as a consistent factor. In fact, some machines that freeze only have 1 autoprotect...

-My host is Windows 11, my guests are Oracle Linux, Fedora Linux, OpenSuSE. With Windows guests I have not seen this happening...

-3D acceleration is deactivated

-I also modified the kernel of the Linux so it does not use the LAPIC TSC deadline timer mode. 

-I observed that it seems to be more frequent to happen after restarting the PC, when it comes back after a screen lock or even a sleep...

I'll try deactivating the autoprotect, but I guess it will be no good either...

And having to freeze all the vms when finishing the working day is a real pain, it never happened before. I hope it will be fixes at some point in the future.

-------------------------------------------

[RaSystemlord]

I can offer two explanations:

1.
It may seem that freezing only happens with VMware and only with some VMs, but the actual explanations might be in reserving the RAM. At least previously, Windows reserved RAM in order. When your memory allocations went over some limit, the faulty RAM became used and then the system froze. Now that you have Oracle there when this happens, the memory allocation might be quite a bit.

To test a faulty RAM, is not exact science. If a tester software, present with most Linux delivery medias, finds faults, then the memory is faulty. If they give a clean bill of health, it doesn't mean that the RAM is healthy. By changing the RAMs on the motherboard from slot to slot, is a logic puzzle and can be used to find a faulty RAM or a faulty slot on the motherboard.

2.
Motherboards do this, because of bad quality or old age.

Obviously, you would need to check the temperatures on your motherboard. That would be the trivial explanation.

Other thing, for old age, I once got a tip from a seasoned over-clocker, lowering the voltage slightly might help. Before that help, I bought a better CPU cooler since those lines of Intels are running very hot, but that did not help any.

3.
Well, OK, if some VM freezes, there are of course very trivial reasons for that, too, like: Windows File Browser freezes with some GUI moves, WEB browsers freeze from time to time, creating a file may freeze Win 11 for half a minute ... all of those might freeze the entire GUI, can happen in Linux, too. You might want to check if Linux itself freezes by going into Linux during the freeze (control+something, look it up) - this is very unlikely, but if it does, you do have a hardware problem.