Virtual Machines with "EFI firmware freeze with black screen when creating VM memory dump "vmss2core"
Article ID: 318382
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
- Creating virtual machine memory dump fails resulting virtual machine freeze on black screen
- The conversion of the .vmss and .vmem files to a .dmp with vmss2core-sb-8456865.exe fails with the errors below,
vmss2core-sb-8456865.exe -W8 xaooezen9902-5e7f8af9.vmss xaooezen9902-5e7f8af9.vmem vmss2core version 8456865 Copyright (C) 1998-2017 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. region[0]: start=0 end=c0000000. region[1]: start=100000000 end=440000000. Cannot translate linear address fffff78000000000. scanning pa=0 len=0x10000000 Cannot translate linear address ffff3893909ccd4f.
Error parsing Windows data. Cannot create memory.dmp .
Finished writing core.
- Virtual machine HW is prior to version 14,. For more information about virtual machine hardware versions, see Virtual machine hardware versions (1003746)
- Virtual machine firmware is set to "EFI"
For more information about suspending virtual machine, see Suspending a virtual machine on ESX/ESXi to collect diagnostic information (2005831)
Environment
Cause
The virtual machine is hanging during boot/reboot because it is encountering an EFI SMM deadlock. The hang means that the virtual machine is stuck in EFI firmware and will not proceed to boot the Windows guest OS, hence vmss2core is unable to interpret the vmss/vmem because Windows is not yet loaded. That is what meant by "user error".
Resolution
Workaround:
To workaround this issue, please use virtual machine hardware 14 or above.
Additional Information
tag rip [0]: size 0x8 position 0x3e22: 00000000FFE0B853
tag rip [1]: size 0x8 position 0x57e1: 00000000FFFFFF84
tag rip [2]: size 0x8 position 0x6fb2: 0000000000008000
tag rip [3]: size 0x8 position 0x8783: 00000000FFE2074C
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