VMWare Workstation black screen on guest on Ryzen
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:25 am
** EDIT: workaround found **
Well, this is a VMWare bug, definitely. Even though 15.6 (15.5?) and 16.x were supposed to play nice with Hyper-V and use the Windows Hypervisor Platform, as it turns out, if ANY of these are enabled in the "Turn Windows Features on/off panel," VMWare acts weird.
Hyper-V
Windows Hypervisor
Virtual Machine Platform
This isn't supposed to happen after the patches, and it didn't happen with my Intel machine, but it's still busted on AMD platforms, or at least Ryzen 5000-series, for the time being. Original post follows below.
- ----------
Hi folks.
I've been running VMware Workstation 16.1.0 with Windows 10 guests, perfectly fine. I've recently swapped my CPU to a Ryzen 9 5900X, on an Asus Strix X570-F mobo. The Windows 10 guests won't start properly now, after the login screen the display goes black, back to the login screen, repeat.
Things I've tried and didn't work:
Set VMWare Tools to auto-update, in the hopes that it was an issue with the virtual graphics card driver.
Starting the guest in Safe Mode and/or low-resolution mode.
Disable/enable 3D acceleration in the settings, with varying amounts of VRAM and monitor settings
Disabling/enabling Hyper-V and the Windows Hypervisor Platform
Uninstalling and reinstalling VMWare Workstation, clearing its settings on uninstall.
Reinstalling Windows 10 on the guest -- a fresh install doesn't even complete until the black screens start happening.
Enabling/disabling CPU side-channel mitigations.
Assigning different amounts of CPU cores and/or RAM.
Double-checked the host's BIOS settings to ensure that virtualization is enabled (VMWare wouldn't work without, but still.)
Changing the guest's hard drive to SATA/NVMe and back.
Changing the guest's firmware from BIOS to UEFI and back (tested with a clean install).
Nothing works, and this is starting to look more and more like an actual bug. Any ideas?
Well, this is a VMWare bug, definitely. Even though 15.6 (15.5?) and 16.x were supposed to play nice with Hyper-V and use the Windows Hypervisor Platform, as it turns out, if ANY of these are enabled in the "Turn Windows Features on/off panel," VMWare acts weird.
Hyper-V
Windows Hypervisor
Virtual Machine Platform
This isn't supposed to happen after the patches, and it didn't happen with my Intel machine, but it's still busted on AMD platforms, or at least Ryzen 5000-series, for the time being. Original post follows below.
- ----------
Hi folks.
I've been running VMware Workstation 16.1.0 with Windows 10 guests, perfectly fine. I've recently swapped my CPU to a Ryzen 9 5900X, on an Asus Strix X570-F mobo. The Windows 10 guests won't start properly now, after the login screen the display goes black, back to the login screen, repeat.
Things I've tried and didn't work:
Set VMWare Tools to auto-update, in the hopes that it was an issue with the virtual graphics card driver.
Starting the guest in Safe Mode and/or low-resolution mode.
Disable/enable 3D acceleration in the settings, with varying amounts of VRAM and monitor settings
Disabling/enabling Hyper-V and the Windows Hypervisor Platform
Uninstalling and reinstalling VMWare Workstation, clearing its settings on uninstall.
Reinstalling Windows 10 on the guest -- a fresh install doesn't even complete until the black screens start happening.
Enabling/disabling CPU side-channel mitigations.
Assigning different amounts of CPU cores and/or RAM.
Double-checked the host's BIOS settings to ensure that virtualization is enabled (VMWare wouldn't work without, but still.)
Changing the guest's hard drive to SATA/NVMe and back.
Changing the guest's firmware from BIOS to UEFI and back (tested with a clean install).
Nothing works, and this is starting to look more and more like an actual bug. Any ideas?