VMWare WKS fail on restarting a paused VM

Hi there
I was about 65% through updating the "Birdie" / Canary build to the latest version on a VM with VMware WKS on a Windows Host -- I needed to travel so I put the VM into "Pause" and shut down the computer.

On restarting the following day -- the VM didn't "Resume" from the paused point but re-started so Windows (in the VM) gave "Undoing changes to computer" so I have to go through the whole kybosh again.

And to add insult to injury WU starts downloading the whole update again -- surely it should have the previous download or does the "Roll back" remove all vestiges of the failed update process.

Perhaps I should have taken a snapshot -- it's unclear. All I wanted to do was just "resume" the VM.

So VmWare WKS - 0 Linux KVM/QEMU 1. !!!! KVM GUEST resumes after HOST re-boot. which is what I would expect.

I think Hyper-V has decent pause VM -- anybody using Hyper-V does a paused guest resume after a HOST re-boot. ??

Cheers
jimbo

I have not had a smiliar problem with VMware WS 17. hen again I no longer use Windows as a host. Just updated my laptop to Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster). Have suspended a Fedora VM. Have to call Eluktronics about a strange video problem - they may not help since Linux on their laptops is not officially supported. But I will repboot now and see if the VM comes out of suspension. Certainly wish MS did not change their policy about VM activation but I have 2 on my desktop under Manjaro.,


I have tried resume on two Windows VM after a day with no problem. Host Manjaro WS Version 17. But I could be lucky.

Cheers

martyfelker said:

I have not had a smiliar problem with VMware WS 17. hen again I no longer use Windows as a host. Just updated my laptop to Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster). Have suspended a Fedora VM. Have to call Eluktronics about a strange video problem - they may not help since Linux on their laptops is not officially supported. But I will repboot now and see if the VM comes out of suspension. Certainly wish MS did not change their policy about VM activation but I have 2 on my desktop under Manjaro.,


I have tried resume on two Windows VM after a day with no problem. Host Manjaro WS Version 17. But I could be lucky.

Cheers

Click to expand...

If you use QEMU on various Linux OS's there's an inconsistency going from QEMU 7.x to 8.X

On arch Linux / Manjaro type systems simply pacman -Syu qemu will resolve the issue (or similar on other systems using the appropriate package manager). Reboot to reload the kernel and restart the QEMU/KVM system including the libvirt daemon.




Then all fine again.




No need to bother with VMWare (any version) if you have a Linux Host -- KVM runs far better and is FREE as well and infinitely more configurable. It's probably as good as HYPER-V is on a Windows Host -- which is itself pretty good -- and much easier to dynamically re-assign external USB devices too via USB re-direct. I wouldn't go back to VMWare now although I used it a lot in the past. On a Windows HOST I'd use HYPER-V and on a Linux Host KVM/QEMU. It's also quite simple to share (not concurrently of course) the same VM whether created on HYPER-V or KVM/QEMU.

Incidently cloning the system from WITHIN the GUEST to a physical disk (not a VM formatted one) will give you a standard copy of your VM on a physical device (it can even be an external drive and will work also in this case as a Win2GO type of system and remain activated. !! . If you do get boot problems then simply re-load the windows bootloader via bcdboot. Boot any device on the windows system which boots into a winpe type command line --even a Windows install disk - just choose repair system and go to command prompt.

For those that don't want to do clean installs and somehow can't get a win2go system to update - simply update the VM which will usually always work if the windows system is actually updateable, clone to a real physical disk and if necessary re-install the bootloader. (bcdboot).

(Make an initial VM - only need to do it once) of a physical running system with all the drivers etc loaded and clone it to a VM. The extra vm required device drivers will be installed at the initial boot of the VM. You can leave these when restoring to windows -- tiny amount of storage and they don't do any harm.

HYPER-V and VIboot makes this quite a simple procedure too for those using Windows Hosts.

Cheers
jimbo