windows 7 guest keeps crashing

[Gyula Greschik]

Hi All: 

I just updated from Workstation Pro 17.5.1 to 17.6.2 on an Opensuse 5.6 host -- it went without a hitch, but the VM keeps crashing within 5-15 minutes each time I start working with it.  I could re-start from a Snapshot about 10 times (trying to work for an hour and a half), once I wanted to send a crash report through VM's such feature but it simply hung.  Then one crash corrupted the VM so that it froze, I could no longer do anything with it, and couldn't even uninstall Workstation.  I have to re-install the entire OS to be able to start again...  Can anyone give me advice?  Has anyone seen anything like this?       

[Gyula Greschik]

Addendum: it isn't the guest that keeps crashing, but Workstation. 

[RaSystemlord]

There can be many reasons, but one overlooked reason is a memory chip failing on the Host. Linux uses memory randomly (and least they used to) and thus crash can happen at any time. The symptoms are what you describe.

For this, you can try to take another (normally there are two) memory chip away and check if it still crashes. Then test the other one. If you have more memory chips, then there is some logic that needs to be put into testing. If not obvious, when you have less memory, you need to do something with your memory configuration in VM and perhaps something what you do on the Host.

There are memory testers, especially with Linux distros. They cannot find all errors, but if they do find an error, then you have a faulty memory chip. So, bad result is always bad, but good result doesn't need to be really good.

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You may also want to play with VM settings to rule out possibilities, if the problem is not about memory. For instance, USB connection should be taken out completely from the Guest to check (you don't need that anyway). Also 3D accelaration is in vain ... well, if it is in vain.

[Gyula Greschik]

Thank you very much for your response. 

I finally figured that if the host (Linux) doesn't use the nvidia video driver (but the open source driver instead) than I am safe. 

I discovered this when I frantically re-installed the crashed system and forgot to add the nviidia driver. 

Thank you, 

Gyula G.