Tag Archives: VMWare

Problem waking up computer from sleep

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I recently upgraded VMware Workstation to version 8 (it also runs Windows 8 nicely) and experienced one problem with putting my laptop to sleep.

The problem was, whenever I closed (suspended) the VM and put laptop to sleep, later when woke it up, it started booting from scratch. It was properly in sleep as the LED was blinking as usual, even the few moments (half a second or so) after waking up it was behaving correctly, at least from what LEDs were doing.

Because I’m putting my laptop (Dell Latitude D620) to sleep all the time, it was a serious problem for me. I did some “debugging” and found conditions for this to happen as well as a solution. I was able to reproduce the problem after taking VM created in VMware Workstation 7, changing HW level to 8 and upgrading VMware tools. Don’t know whether it’s absolute root cause, but it was just enough to reproduce the problem.

The solution (except avoiding changes above, but maybe the clean VM with HW level 8 and latest VMware tools will result in same problem) is easy. Because the laptop until starting the wake up procedure was behaving as expected, my focus was to CPU. After changing the CPU Virtualization engine mode from Automatic to Intel VT-x or AMD-V (I have Intel Core 2 Duo) the problem disappeared.

Hard to say what was VMware doing with CPU that even after closing it it was in such a state, but I’m happy to have normal behavior back. If you’re experiencing same issue, hope this works for you too.

VMWare Workstation 7.1 solves the Visual Studio rendering problem

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The VMWare Workstation had a problem with Visual Studio 2010 rendering (in fact all WPF apps were affected) when the hardware graphic acceleration was turned on. But since version 7.1 this is no longer true.

Recently I updated my virtual machine (VMWare Workstation 7.1 + new VMWare Tools + turning graphic acceleration on) with Visual Studio 2010 and the rendering is correct. Finally I’ll enjoy the graphic card accelerated machine and lighten up CPU.

VMWare Workstation 7 and Visual Studio 2010 rendering problem

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I recently migrated from VPC to VMWare Workstation. So far all looks good only one problem I faced two days ago. When I run Visual Studio 2010 (Beta 2), the menu rendering was odd, text in code editor was disappearing and so on. After some searching I found, that it may be caused by 3D graphics acceleration turned on in VMWare Workstation. Surprisingly you have to turn it off – either in system, setting DisableHWAcceleration in registry (it’s for WPF) or unchecking the 3D acceleration in VM’s settings. After this adjustment (my choice was the VM level, as it may be improved later and it’s IMO easier to turn it on), all works great. I hope when the RTM of Visual Studio 2010 will be released, this will work as expected.

Virtual PC ==> VMWare Workstation

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I’ve been using Virtual PC (2007) for a quite while and very heavily. In fact my entire development environment is in VMs. But I was getting more and more upset with Virtual PC. The version 2007 SP1 is/was kind of old, missing some new features and improvements. When testing the new Windows Virtual PC I felt like it’s focused more on standard users and mainly to run some XP applications in Windows 7, not as a full size virtualization tool for advanced users (but I may be wrong, it’s just feeling).

So I tested the VMWare Workstation 7, couple of days ago. Shortly, I’m sold. It’s much more mature (again my feeling), has really advanced features for geeks as me (like the snapshots – I created my own way with Virtual PC, but in VMWare Workstation it’s much easier) and the Unity – I like it (I know Windows Virtual PC has this too, but VMWare Workstation seems to support more systems).

The migration was the only challenge. All my VMs in Virtual PC contained software and setups that I didn’t want to reinstall from scratch. I’m running some XP boxes, where the migration was OK. I was just forced to do the activation again, but no problem. The Windows 7 (this instance was RC) it ended in BSOD. System suggested me some repair utility during next boot, but it didn’t help. So the W7 system will be probably reinstalled, which isn’t so bad, because I was planning to install the RTM, just little depressing. The Linux boxes, based mainly on some Live CDs, ran without problems. So the overall result is good, I think.

From the performance perspective, I can’t judge the performance of VM itself. I was more or less happy with Virtual PC and I don’t have some exact numbers to provide. But what’s faster is saving and restoring the state of the machine and I’m using this a lot.

I hope I’ll not find some critical problem that will make me hate the VMWare. :)