Windows 11 Guest VM freezes

[BradyC]

Windows 10 host. Workstation 17.6.3.

I leave the Win11 guest idling for, say, half an hour and the typical result is that it no longer responds to any input, it looks frozen. I also see that the Workstation VMX process has high CPU usage. The guest itself seems to still be running (no BSOD, no errors), but it's unresponsive from the POV of the host.

The only (temporary) solution is to suspend and then resume the guest.

I tried disabling 3D acceleration, it didn't help. I tried adding mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE to the .vmx file, it didn't help.

It seems that if I restart the host, the Win11 guest then works for a longer time before freezing. Though I didn't do extensive testing on this.

Win11 guests used to work just fine in the past, so something happened (probably Workstation updates, but I'm not ruling out Windows updates).

Any other possible workarounds or solutions in sight?

(I know there are a couple of existing threads about this issue, but I can't post there for whatever reason.)

[BradyC]

After more testing, here are some findings:

• The bug depends on the Windows hypervisor being active. This can mean "Windows Hypervisor Platform" being enabled, but it can also mean enabling Core Isolation/Memory Integrity, for example (and probably also WSL or Hyper-V). I've not seen the bug appear with those disabled.
• The buggy state, which causes guests to freeze, doesn't appear soon after rebooting the host, for at least several hours. But I have observed it after running the host for about 10-12 hours, then putting the host in hibernation and resuming the host from hibernation after 10-12 hours.
• Hibernating soon after a reboot and waking from hibernation after a few minutes is not enough to trigger the buggy state. I don't know if hibernation is required to trigger the buggy state at all. Maybe it's enough to keep the host running for a long enough time (let's say 24 hours).
• The freezing happens even faster with Linux guests. I have used the latest versions of Ubuntu and Mint for testing. When the host is in the buggy state, Linux guests freeze in about 3-4 minutes. Windows 11 guests take about 10 minutes to freeze IIRC. And I have never seen Windows 10 guests freeze.
• Installing Vmware tools makes no difference; it freezes either way. Guests running on legacy BIOS or UEFI also makes no difference.

So, to recap, here is how I can reproduce this bug on my Windows 10 22H2 host (with Windows updates as of April 2025). I'm using Linux as an example, because it freezes faster, but a Windows 11 guest would work too:

1. Enable "Windows Hypervisor Platform" and reboot.
2. Install Linux Mint as a guest VM.
3. Shut down the guest VM, but keep the host running for 10 hours.
4. Hibernate the host for 12 hours then wake it up from hibernation.
5. Start the Linux Mint VM. The result is that the guest will now freeze in less than 5 minutes.

[Dhairya Tomar]

BradyC Requesting you to recreate the issue and share support bundle of the affected VM.

[Meet patel]

hii can you please look in to this because you are the one who handle the thread:-https://community.broadcom.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=7171&MessageKey=afd7b8b3-1564-466d-a45f-466379788268&CommunityKey=fb707ac3-9412-4fad-b7af-018f5da56d9f please i also created a new thread about it