06 Apr 2010

KB: ESX 4.0 Update 1: Windows 32bit VM with the VMware Tools XPDM SVGA II graphics driver installed fail

Last week, a colleague of mine was informed by VMware of an issue with VMware ESX 4.0 Update 1 hosting 32-bit Windows 2003 Virtual Machines with more than 3GB of RAM. the issue causes VMs with the configuration specified below to crash upon reboot.

 

  • 32-Bit Microsoft Windows Operating Systems that use the XPDM (Windows XP Display Driver Model)
    • Specifically: Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista
  • Virtual Machine RAM is Set to a value above 3GB
  • VMware Tools Update 1 installed with the SVGA XPDM Driver

This bug does not affect the stability of virtual machines during normal business operations and it only affects ESX/i 4.0 Update 1 environments. Update 2 will include a fix for this issue.

In the meantime, use one of the following workarounds:
  1. Upgrade the virtual machine guest operating systems to 64-bit;
  2. Reduce the virtual machine memory to 3GB or lower;
  3. Request a hot-patch from VMware Support;
  4. Deploy Update 1 with one of the following options:
    • Install the Update 1 VMware Tools, but uninstall the display driver (SVGA XPDM) immediately
    • Install the Update 1 VMware Tools and replace the SVGA XPDM U1 driver with the original 4.0 version;
    • Do not update the VMware Tools on your Virtual Machines to Update 1.
 VMware yesterday released a KB article about this issue. The KB article can be found at: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1020158 (Opens in new Window).
 

 

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