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Beachguy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 23, 2011
1,008
407
Florida, USA
Note: Mods, I am not sure if this belongs here or in the software section. Feel free to move if this should be in software, with my gratitude.


June 2012 MBP, 16GB Ram, 750GB HDD, upgraded screen (NOT retina), I7 2.6 Ghz

Running the current VMWare Fusion, I have several Windows 7 VMDKs that I use on both Windows machines and on my Macs (not the same ones, but they are copies of the same VMDKs on each machine.) Until this week, I've had no trouble on any of my Macs with these VMDKs. But on Monday, I tried to fire up one of them, and I got a variety of errors, which led to them closing out and having to restart. The same thing happened on several of the variants on my MBP. I loaded a brand new one and set it up as well, one I built to use at work and use reliably on the work PC I have. This same VMDK works fine on my 3 year old HP laptop at home. However, when I moved it to my MBP, it showed the same problems.

I installed VMWare Fusion again. It updated a couple of point notches (I think 4.0 to 4,02) but the same behavior resulted. I have no other problems with any software on the MBP. I use these so I can access a corporate VPN and not be restricted out of using my PC for personal internet connections, plus I don't want the VPN software on my personal environments. Right now, I have to use RDP to one of my Windows machines to run the virtual machines, but it is much slower because the laptop is older and slower (Core2 Quad with only 6GB RAM.)

Has anyone got ideas where I can trouble shoot? I am tapped out on ideas. The errors are non-specific; I can't find what is causing the crash in the event logs in the VM nor on the Mac.

Thanks, peeps.

David
 

MadTester

macrumors regular
Mar 24, 2012
136
0
Note: Mods, I am not sure if this belongs here or in the software section. Feel free to move if this should be in software, with my gratitude.


June 2012 MBP, 16GB Ram, 750GB HDD, upgraded screen (NOT retina), I7 2.6 Ghz

Running the current VMWare Fusion, I have several Windows 7 VMDKs that I use on both Windows machines and on my Macs (not the same ones, but they are copies of the same VMDKs on each machine.) Until this week, I've had no trouble on any of my Macs with these VMDKs. But on Monday, I tried to fire up one of them, and I got a variety of errors, which led to them closing out and having to restart. The same thing happened on several of the variants on my MBP. I loaded a brand new one and set it up as well, one I built to use at work and use reliably on the work PC I have. This same VMDK works fine on my 3 year old HP laptop at home. However, when I moved it to my MBP, it showed the same problems.

I installed VMWare Fusion again. It updated a couple of point notches (I think 4.0 to 4,02) but the same behavior resulted. I have no other problems with any software on the MBP. I use these so I can access a corporate VPN and not be restricted out of using my PC for personal internet connections, plus I don't want the VPN software on my personal environments. Right now, I have to use RDP to one of my Windows machines to run the virtual machines, but it is much slower because the laptop is older and slower (Core2 Quad with only 6GB RAM.)

Has anyone got ideas where I can trouble shoot? I am tapped out on ideas. The errors are non-specific; I can't find what is causing the crash in the event logs in the VM nor on the Mac.

Thanks, peeps.

David

Dude, I'm truly sorry to hear that, I had a similar problem where one of my W7 vm's would loop when booting so would never actually get to the login screen so ended up replacing with a copy I'd made earlier, but I keep backup copies of my VMDK's. I also keep time machine backups which I take every month.
Maybe a crook snapshot? (That's just a a wild guess).

The only thing I can suggest is that if you have any recent backups then I'd just copy them over to your machine. I know it's not ideal, but that's a start point (I hope)... :confused:

HTH
 

Beachguy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 23, 2011
1,008
407
Florida, USA
Thanks, stridemat! I figured it was in the wrong place.

Mad, I keep backups and backups of backups, so I don't use the snapshot feature. This seems to affect all my copies, so I am not sure what is happening. I thought using a fresh, never used copy would be a good test and it failed also. I took all the startup stuff out except what I truly need (anti-virus, VPN, and VMWare Tools.) Perhaps I'll disable those as well and see if those are causing the issue.
 

chrfr

macrumors G5
Jul 11, 2009
13,492
6,981
Has anyone got ideas where I can trouble shoot? I am tapped out on ideas. The errors are non-specific; I can't find what is causing the crash in the event logs in the VM nor on the Mac.
I wouldn't rule out there being an incompatibility with VMware Fusion. 4.1.4 is the last version of 4.x available. Are you using that? Is your Windows VMware application up to date as well? Maybe there's an issue with VMware tools.
Reinstalling VMware won't touch the virtual disk files; can you get working if you recover a VM from a backup?
Also keep in mind that Time Machine doesn't necessarily back up virtual machines properly, particularly if the VM is open at the time of backup. It may be worthwhile to do a test of a new Windows installation to be sure there's no other problem going on if an old VM from backup doesn't work.
 

Beachguy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 23, 2011
1,008
407
Florida, USA
chrfr, I am using the latest build of both VMWare products.

When I get home, I'm going to try disabling Tools completely and see if that zaps me, along with the VPN stuff. I did try a different VM with a differetnt heritage (I built it from a different install) and it, too, acted the same way, which made me thing perhaps VMWare was corrupted, but I don't recall if this started having issues before or after I installed the VPN. The VPN, by the way, is Cisco.
 

Beachguy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 23, 2011
1,008
407
Florida, USA
Follow-up: The VPN removal seems to have helped but I haven't had much chance to do much with it yet. Still, I grabbed a slightly older version of the Cisco client and I'll see how that goes. Thanks to all!
 
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