I run an estate of about 800 ESXi 4.1 installations that each power 2 XP VMs. Each site is a carbon replica of all other ESXi hosts and the VMs running on them are identical too.
Lets call the VM on each ESXi server as guestA and guestB.
1. I get about 300 service calls per month where always guestB, never guestA, hangs on the Windows black splash screen. GuestB and guestA do auto reboots via the windows shutdown command at 06:00 daily.
2. If we stop the guestB VM via vsphere client, start it again, the guest will boot up successfully. Then the very next day on reboot at 06:00, the machine hangs on the Windows black splash screen again.
3. This will continue every day like this until the host itself is shutdown and restarted, then the VM will reboot successfully every day at 06:00 without any problems.
4. We get approx. 3-4 of these per day but only guestB, NEVER guestA - It is very confusing indeed.
Any ideas guys.
Many thanks in advance.
I have attached some logs.
Regards
JASON :-)