Workstation 7.6 won't grab input after host lock

[lepp]

As the title says... I have a Windows 11 host with Workstation 7.6. VMs appear to freeze after a host login lock/unlock event. But what's happening is that the VM won't grab the mouse after the event. If I resize the VM window, functionality is restored. Happens both with a Kali VM and Win11 VM.

Uninstalling 7.6 and reinstalling 7.5.2 fixes the issue. Anything I can try to fix this behavior in 7.6?

Thank you,

[Dhairya Tomar]

leppRequest you to reproduce the issue and share the Support bundle of the affected VM using Help->Support->Collect Support Data.

Also please share Host Machine information like which processor is being used Intel or AMD.

[lepp]

Dhairya,

The host is:

System SKU    LENOVO_MT_21AH_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad T14 Gen 3
Processor    12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1270P, 2200 Mhz, 12 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date    LENOVO N3MET19W (1.18 ), 3/20/2024
Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    40.0 GB

I'll PM you a link to the support bundle. Thank you!

[Dhairya Tomar]

lepp Thanks for sharing the Info, raised a ticket internally, relevant team will look into the same.

[Eugene Mayevski]

On Windows 10, the situation is the same. Input is grabbed as it seems, but the image is not refreshed (like the virtual display got stuck/disconnected). In my case, after I resize the window, I should use the "Fit Guest Now" in the menu ("Fit Window Now" does not seem to help). 

[Dhairya Tomar]

leppPlease add below parameter to the vmx file of the affected VM and let us know your observations-

mks.vk.enableVulkanRenderer=0

[Eugene Mayevski]

> Please add below parameter to the vmx file of the affected VM and let us know your observations-

Didn't work for me. I tried adding it with 0 as a number and as "0", closed the window and re-opened the VM (the machine was shut down before closing the window and started after that). So I can say that there was no effect at all. 

[lepp]

I can also confirm that adding mks.vk.enableVulkanRenderer=0 to the vmx file made no difference.

[FCrane]

I can also confirm this bug! The VM freezes even if it is just idle for some time (no lock required)! Very annoying!

Only disabling "Accelerate 3D graphics" in the "Display" options of the VM Settings solves the problem, but this will mean you loose some graphics effects (like rounded corners of dialogs in Windows 11 guest systems).

There's obviously some serious bug with the graphics driver, which was introduced in v7.6, because it never happened on previous versions.

Regards!

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

Can you please also try mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE (and keep the enable 3D for the VM) to see if things are better?

[Eugene Mayevski]

 > Can you please also try mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE (and keep the enable 3D for the VM) to see if things are better?

This seems to help, thank you! But how can one change the setting for the VM that is encrypted? Its .vmx file contains almost nothing - is it still the right place to add the setting? 

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

>This seems to help, thank you! But how can one change the setting for the VM that is encrypted? Its .vmx file contains almost nothing - is it still the right place to add the setting? 

You can put in in the user config file in c:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\VMware\preferences.ini and it should take effect.

[lepp]

 > Can you please also try mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE (and keep the enable 3D for the VM) to see if things are better?

Agreed, this config option does seem to mitigate the issue.

[Adrian Lewis]

I tried the mks.enableDX12Presentation="FALSE" and thought it had resolved the issue but the mouse / keyboard stopped responding after about an hour. Before that it was freezing after a few minutes operation. Workstation Pro 17.6.0 build-24238078, Host Windows 10, Guest Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise LTSC 2024. Reboot is required or ive had some success with pause and resume

[FCrane]

Version 7.6.1 still freezes without "mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE" ! Why can't this be fixed???

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

> I tried the mks.enableDX12Presentation="FALSE" and thought it had resolved the issue but the mouse / keyboard stopped responding after about an hour. Before that it was freezing after a few minutes operation. Workstation Pro 17.6.0 build-24238078, Host Windows 10, Guest Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise LTSC 2024. Reboot is required or ive had some success with pause and resume

Can you please upload the vmware.log and mksSandbox.log (or the support bundle)  when it crashes?

> Version 7.6.1 still freezes without "mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE" ! Why can't this be fixed???

We do have a fix but it didn't make into 17.6.1. Look for it in the coming update.

[altae]

On my system (Windows 11 24H2) and VMWare Workstation 17.6.2, the issue persists. The guest (EndeavourOS, Arch Linux) still "freezes" after locking the host. Resizing the Windows "unfreezes" the guest. Setting mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE also works.

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

> 

On my system (Windows 11 24H2) and VMWare Workstation 17.6.2, the issue persists. The guest (EndeavourOS, Arch Linux) still "freezes" after locking the host. Resizing the Windows "unfreezes" the guest. Setting mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE also works.

Can you please attach vmware.log and mksSandbox.log from a run when the guest freezes and you unfreeze it?

[altae]

Here come the log files. By the way my CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and the graphics card a Nvidia Gforce RTX 2080 Ti.

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

> 

Here come the log files. By the way my CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and the graphics card a Nvidia Gforce RTX 2080 Ti.

According the logs, it's doing what the fix is supposed to do. However, we don't have a reproducible case here for this particular issue, hence so far we have to do the testing via your system and logs if that's fine by you. I have couple of questions.

1. What do you exactly mean by the guest is still frozen after unlock? You click on the VM and it does not respond? What happens if you have a video playing in the guest and you lock host and come back, the video still keeps playing or is it frozen? If you have a linux terminal open in the guest and type while the guest is frozen, do they appear when you resize it?
2. Can you also please put this config option mks.sandbox.log.vmxShadowAll = TRUE and capture the logs when you do the experiments above.

[Peter Simpson]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay I updated from 17.5.2 to 17.6.2 yesterday and the VM I use the most started to show very weird display artefacts that did not appear on 17.5.2. On one occasion I used CTRL/Alt/Delete on the host to start Task Manager and my two screens went black as usual, but the VM window stayed black after Task Manager was running and appeared to be "unresponsive" as I clicked and pressed key combinations.

After making the VM enter full screen mode the display returned and I found windows in unexpected places and something running that I didn't start. I suspect that this mayhem was due to my random clicking and dragging on the black VM screen while I couldn't see what I was doing.

My point is that the VM was not "unresponsive" it was working fine, it was just that the display was corrupt and did not reflect the changes I was unknowingly making.

I also saw other display issues:

• A window with scrolling text contents appeared to update in two halves. Imagine a vertical line dividing the window in two: the left half would update and then about 250ms later the second half would scroll up to match the first half.
• Moving windows around with the mouse was very jerky and seemed the windows seemed to update in chunks.
• Occasionally windows did not update visually when I know they had changed.

All of the weirdness went away when I set  mks.vk.enableVulkanRenderer=0 as others have suggested / found.

As far as I can tell 17.6.2 runs as fast, and is just as usable, as 17.5.2 provided I disable the Vulkan Renderer as above.

Best wishes, Peter

Host

• Processor: Intel 12900K (eight P cores with 2 threads each and eight E cores with 1 thread each)
• RAM: 64GB
• Graphics: Nvidia 1600Ti, latest drivers / Nvidia app installed
• OS: Windows 11 24H2, latest Windows Update patches installed

VM

• Virtual Processor: 1 processor, 8 cores per processor
• Virtual RAM: 16GB
• Windows 10, latest Windows Update patches installed
• Host processors 8 to 23 are disabled in the machine definition VMX file so the VM always runs on the host's P cores
• Updated VMWare tools to the version delivered by the 17.6.2 update

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

@Peter Simpson Thanks for the detailed write up, that helps us. I have couple of requests if you have a chance.

1. Is it possible to capture a screen recording when the corruption is happening?
2. Can you please put this config option mks.sandbox.log.vmxShadowAll = TRUE in the .vmx file while the VM is powered on and then capture vmware.log and mksSandbox.log when you see the corruption? Thank you!

[altae]

By frozen I mean the guest does not respond to mouse and/ or keyboard inputs. The display is also frozen meaning the image does not refresh until I minimize and restore the virtual machine. I tried running a youtube video and it keeps playing while the guest is frozen (the image is frozen but the audio keeps playing). What's more I opened a Linux terminal and tried entering something while the virtual machine was frozen. After minimizing and restoring the virtual machine the keystrokes I entered appeared on the display meaning they were registered while the guest was frozen. I hope this helps narrowing down the cause of the described issue.

[Peter Simpson]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay This is my second attempt to get the information to you, my first attempt was rejected by a moderator because it contained a link to the files, which was disappointing, I'm just trying to be helpful here! Anyway here is my original post and a zip of the files.

I've done as requested and attached a 2-minute video I made of the screen using my camera so as not to have any additional software running that may interfere with display rendering.

I also:

• Added mks.sandbox.log.vmxShadowAll = TRUE to the VMX file
• Posted the logs as requested but the sandbox log doesn't seem to contain anything more than normal as far as I can see.
• Posted a PDF showing File Explorer with part coloured black that I reported in my previous post. This area should be white and list files in the selected folder.

The video is about 2 minutes long in all, here are some of the more notable artefacts I noticed:

• 00:07 - The Build\Export text should not be there, it's come from a completely different line
• 00:08 - Corruption at the end of the "Done building project" line
• 00:15 - Top half of the first part of the line below "SHA1 hash" is missing
• 00:22 - The SOFA-64.dll" text should not be there as at 00:07
• 00:36 - Example of a line displaying in the wrong place and "moving up" to its correct position
• 00:39 - The M.exe and M.pdb text should not be there, it stays like this for quite a while because the build process is waiting for code signing to complete, which takes several seconds, and there are no new lines to display in the window
• 01:02 - I terminated the build process in the command widow and had a look, off camera, at the log file using my main screen (the VM is displaying on my secondary screen)
• 01:27 - I decided to shut down the VM to ensure I had all the log data
• 01:30 - The Start menu does not display all the tiles and contains corrupted text from the underlying command window 
• 01:57 - Shutdown complete

Best wishes, Peter

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

Thanks for all the logs and videos. After spending quite a bit on this, I was able to reproduce the freezing issue at will. We are currently looking at it. The corruption mentioned by Peter might be something else. I will look at that soon. 

[Peter Simpson]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay Three settings have been suggested that could influence the display artefacts that I see, so I've tried all 8 setting combinations to determine which ones affect the issue, see image below. My conclusions are:

• enable3d must be true in order for artefacts to be visible.
• enableDX12Presentation controls whether or not artefacts are visible when enable3d is TRUE.
• enableVulkanRenderer has no influence whether or not artefacts are visible

I hope this helps your diagnosis, please let me know if you need my to try any other tests.

Best wishes, Peter

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

@Peter Simpson Do you have the dynamic refresh on for windows? Can you please check if the display artifacts you are seeing are not present with dynamic refresh off or with any of the refresh rates listed in display settings. Thanks!

[Peter Simpson]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay My Dell second monitor, where I normally place the Workstation window, doesn't support dynamic refresh rates and only supports a 59.95Hz display rate. The artefacts are visible on this monitor as described in my last post.

I tried placing the Workstation window on my primary BenQ SW270C monitor, although this doesn't support dynamic refresh either, but it does support a wider range of refresh rates. Unfortunately, the display artefacts appear at all SW270C refresh rates.

 I've shown the refresh rates that the SW270 supports below.

Whenever I select a refresh rate other than 59.95, the "Active Signal Mode" shows the resolution to be 1920 x 1080 and the screen detail appears fuzzy compared to the 59.95Hz refresh rate.

[altae]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay According to you message from December 21 you have all the info needed to tackle the freezing issue, is this correct? Or do you need something?

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

Yes, we are actively debugging the issue.

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

I'm happy to inform that a fix is being pushed in for this. Look for it in the 17.6.3. I hope we got it right this time. Unfortunately, there is no way to get a build to you for testing so you will need to wait for the 17.6.3 release.

[altae]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay Great news, thanks for your effort.

[altae]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay Today I tried the new release (version 17.6.3) and unfortunately the freezing issue has not been resolved. In fact it has even gotten worse. Now VMWare Workstation completely freezes when the host is locked. This means not even minimizing and restoring the window makes VMWare Workstation responsive again meaning I have to force close it through task manager. Setting mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE still circumvents the issue.

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

I thought we really fixed it this time. Our QE has verified that to be the case as well. Can you please provide the vmware.log and mksSandbox.log? Everyone else is seeing this fixed or still happening?

[altae]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay I have removed mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE from the .vmx config file and will monitor the situation. As soon as the error occurs again I will send you the log files.

[Peter Simpson]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay I am sorry to say that 17.6.3 has not fixed the irregular scrolling / video corruption issue that I reported either.

Regards, Peter

[piggyz]

Upgraded finally from 7.5.2 to 7.6.3 and finally it seems fixed!

i don’t have hacks in config files or registry tweaks. It is a plain install upgraded as I said from 7.5.2.

tested on two machines both windows 24h2 multi core i7 14th gen hosts and the fix works well for now with all the guests, both linux, windows and freebsd.

i also noted some optimization in the code (probably) becouse especially with 6.1x guests linux kernels everythings seems even more fast and reactive than before.

Just less of one day of testing, then the problem with previous 17.6 releases was evident from the first moments of use.

[altae]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay Here are the log files. There is a difference to version 17.6.2: Formerly Workstation Pro froze immediately when the screen was locked. Now in 17.6.3 it does not freeze instantly when the screen is locked. Today for example I had been waiting for an hour before I unlocked the screen again and realized that Workstation Pro was all frozen and I needed to kill the process in task manager. And of course there is also the difference that in 17.6.2 Workstation Pro could be unfrozen by minimizing and restoring the window while 17.6.3 freezes completely and needs to be force closed in task manager. By the way there is another symptom too: There is a distortion in the image while scrolling, for example in a web browser. Both (the freezing and the image distortion) can be circumvented by setting mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE.

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

>>  @Shibdas Bandyopadhyay I am sorry to say that 17.6.3 has not fixed the irregular scrolling / video corruption issue that I reported either.

@Peter Simpson The fix that went it was specifically for the guest freeze issue. We unfortunately could not reproduce your issue in house so we don't know the cause of it yet.

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

@altae Your log shows we are going into a device removed loop which means everytime we spin up DX12 presentation we get a device removed from windows and we keep doing it in a loop which would also explain why your workstation would appear to be hung doing this on a loop. It's possible this is being hit after a while of putting host to sleep (when it's in deep sleep or hibernation) and in this case restarting DX12 Presentation does not work. So you don't see this problem if you lock/unlock, put host to sleep and comeback quickly which was happening before with 17.6.2? We can try to repro this here by putting host to sleep longer.

[altae]

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay My computer never goes to sleep, it's set so show the screen saver after 10 minutes of idling and after 60 minutes it switches off the display. When the screen saver is shown the computer is also locked meaning I need to log in with my pin when I reactivate the computer. I cannot tell you how long I have to wait until Workstation Pro freezes but until now whenever it happened the screen had already been switched off which would mean I waited at least 60 minutes. When I lock the PC and log in again after only a short time Workstation Pro does not freeze anymore like it did with 17.6.2. By the way thanks for looking into it I really appreciate it.

[FCrane]

I've removed

mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE 

from the vmx files and Vmware 17.6.3 build-24583834 crashes horribly after a while! At first it seems to work, the machines don't seem to lock anymore, but after a while (can not determine when), all VMs crash (see attached log) and the host system acts like crazy! "Out of memory", most other running apps crash, etc. 

The new version is completely unusable!

I'll add "mks.enableDX12Presentation=FALSE" again and check if these horrible crashes still occur...

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

>> after a while (can not determine when), all VMs crash (see attached log) and the host system acts like crazy! "Out of memory", most other running apps crash, etc. 

You are also hitting the device removed loop I mentioned in the comment above. Do you know a way to consistently hitting this. For example, you can have only one VM without the config option and see when it crashes or what makes it crash.

[altae]

Unfortunately my last comment has not been published so I post it again:

@Shibdas Bandyopadhyay My computer never goes to sleep, it's set so show the screen saver after 10 minutes of idling and after 60 minutes it switches off the display. When the screen saver is shown the computer is also locked meaning I need to log in with my pin when I reactivate the computer. I cannot tell you how long I have to wait until Workstation Pro freezes but until now whenever it happened the screen had already been switched off which would mean I waited at least 60 minutes. When I lock the PC and log in again after only a short time Workstation Pro does not freeze anymore like it did with 17.6.2. By the way thanks for looking into it I really appreciate it.

[FCrane]

This happens mostly hours after starting the system - there is no way I can trigger this reliably. I do not have the time or the resources to do your work (unless you want to pay me for this).

Get your act together and finally fix this horrible bug to make your product usable again...

[Peter Simpson]

Hi @Shibdas Bandyopadhyay,

I'm pleased to report that the scrolling text corruption that I reported has now gone away. This coincided with replacing my NVIDIA 1660Ti graphics card with a much more powerful NVIDIA 5080 card. I decided to change the card to speed up AI photographic image processing and have no reason to suspect that the 1660Ti card is faulty, all my graphics intensive software worked fine with it, it was just too slow with AI workloads.

I thought I should let you know in case it opens another avenue for investigating reported issues and may help anyone else who comes across something similar.

Best wishes, Peter

[Shibdas Bandyopadhyay]

> I'm pleased to report that the scrolling text corruption that I reported has now gone away. This coincided with replacing my NVIDIA 1660Ti graphics card with a much more powerful NVIDIA 5080 card

@Peter Simpson Did you also upgrade the NVIDIA driver during the process? It might be related to driver upgrade

[Peter Simpson]

> Did you also upgrade the NVIDIA driver during the process? It might be related to driver upgrade

@Shibdas BandyopadhyayVery good point, yes I did!

To test this I reverted to the 1660Ti and the issue was immediately apparent. After re-installing the 5080 I could no longer see the issue. Both cards in this test used NVidia's latest driver: 576.02. 

Best wishes, Peter