Windows – All VMware software & their installers fail to start, all of sudden, with no error messages & without getting listed in Task Manager

vmware-workstationwindowswindows 7

I have been using VMware Player on a Windows 7 machine.

Today I noticed that my VMware player wasn't starting so tried to repair it using the installer but even that failed to start. After clicking to run VMware player & allowing admin permissions, the program just doesn't start.

I even tried installing the latest version of VMware but that too failed. Nothing happens when I try to start VMware Player or its installer. Everything works fine on my computer apart from that.

Now I tried to install the fresh trial version of VMware workstation, that installer even fails to start.
Previously everything used to work fine.

Why is the whole product family of VMware failing to start now?

Very occasionally I saw this error when trying to run the installer: enter image description here

Edit:

I don't know what to look into the Event logs.. here is a snapshot of the application logs listed for Vmware:

enter image description here

Here are the details of one of those logs:-

Log Name:      Application
Source:        VMware NAT Service
Date:          21-01-2012 19:19:07
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Rajat-PC
Description:
The description for Event ID 1000 from source VMware NAT Service cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event: 

Using configuration file: C:\ProgramData\VMware\vmnetnat.conf.
IP address: 192.168.186.2
 Subnet: 255.255.255.0
External IP address: 0.0.0.0
Device: vmnet8.
MAC address: 00:50:56:EC:E3:0A.
Ignoring host MAC address: 00:50:56:C0:00:08.


Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="VMware NAT Service" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
    <Level>4</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-01-21T13:49:07.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>24656</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Computer>Rajat-PC</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>Using configuration file: C:\ProgramData\VMware\vmnetnat.conf.
IP address: 192.168.186.2
 Subnet: 255.255.255.0
External IP address: 0.0.0.0
Device: vmnet8.
MAC address: 00:50:56:EC:E3:0A.
Ignoring host MAC address: 00:50:56:C0:00:08.
</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Details of a vmauthd error:

  Log Name:      Application
Source:        vmauthd
Date:          14-01-2012 12:37:05
Event ID:      100
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Rajat-PC
Description:
The description for Event ID 100 from source vmauthd cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event: 

Failed to read registry perf object Process\ID Process


Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="vmauthd" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">100</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-01-14T07:07:05.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>24291</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Computer>Rajat-PC</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>Failed to read registry perf object Process\ID Process
</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Details included in all the error logs for vmauthd:

Failed to read registry perf object Memory\Committed Bytes

Failed to read registry perf object Memory\Page Faults/sec

Error 232 while sending PID reply

Failed to read registry perf object Memory\Cache Bytes

Failed to read registry perf object Process\ID Process

Failed to read registry perf object Memory\Pool Nonpaged Bytes

Failed to read registry perf object Memory\Pool Paged Bytes

Error 232 while sending ERROR reply

Best Answer

From what I see from the log entries there, you have a vmauthd error. This error usually prevents you from starting any type of VM on the machine; this can be caused through several issues:

The service itself is stopped/disabled
The licence key is expired
The service is not found.

Given the vmauthd error details you have provided, unfortunately doesn't answer the question, given that the actual error from vmauthd didn't return any details back to windows. So, now, we need to do some basic troubleshooting, to ensure that the VMware is setup properly on the system:

Recovery Options

In situations where applications just will not install, or under normal circumstances nothing works, there are a few additional steps to consider:

Alternate Profile: Creating an alternate user profile on the computer can help to install software, or work with Operating System components that otherwise may be locked, corrupted, or otherwise denied access on the primary profile.

Press WinKey + R
Type in control userpasswords2 and press Enter on your keyboard

user account screenshot

Click Add... to get to the 'Add New User...' screen

test user screenshot

Fill in the necessary information.
Click on Next
You can enter a password if you wish, I just usually leave it blank, as it will be just a temporary account.

user group screen

Select the Administrators option, so that you have proper control on the machine.
Click on Finish to finish adding the user to the computer.

You can then go ahead and completely restart the computer, and log directly into the test account. Try to run the VMWare Player installer (not the workstation one), to see if it installs.

System Restore: The other option that is available to you is to run System Restore. This is a good feature of Windows that allows the user to restore their machine back to a previous state in time. Given that you know when the last time it WAS working, you should be able to restore just prior to that and see if your applications start.

Additional Troubleshooting

Service Verification

VMWare Player 4.02x should have the following after install:

services

You can verify this information by doing the following:

Click Start
Type in: services.msc
Press Enter on your keyboard.

That will bring up your Service console. Make sure those services exist. IF THEY DO NOT, you will need to re-install VMWare Player 4.02x.

Service Configuration

Make sure that the VMware Authentication Service is running. [Not disabled, not stopped].
Make sure that the VMware Authentication service is set to run as Local System Account.
IF THIS IS A SERVER SETUP: Make sure that the netlogon service is Set to Automatic and not disabled or manual.

User Configuration

Make sure the user is either an Administrator, or that the Virtual Machine is setup on a local system account, so that when started, it runs with the proper credentials.
For Windows 7 and Vista with User Account Control Enabled: Make sure you set the VMWare Workstation/appliance executable files to always run as administrator.

Performance Counters: information you provided, please run the following from the Command Line via an Elevated Command prompt:

LODCTR /R

This command rebuilds the perf registry strings and info from scratch based on the current registry settings and backup INI files.

You can also run this from an actual script (once you run this, run the script anyway, just to make sure that your services are setup properly as well, then try your images).

Application Scripting/Testing:

You could create a nice batch file that includes the following:

lodctr /r
net stop vmauthdservice
net start vmauthdservice

And then run it whenever you have issues. Note, this isn't available on Windows XP, but on Vista, 7, and above, you can run this. Make sure you run from an ELEVATED command prompt:

Click Start
Type in 'cmd' into the search bar at the bottom
Right Click on the cmd result in the list above
Click on Run as Administrator...

Then execute the commands above.

This little script rebuilds the proper performance strings/counters for Virtual Machines on the system, starts and stops the VM Authentication and Registration Services.

You can then just go ahead and try out your VM images again.

Related Solutions

Windows – Confirm HDD errors were due to USB enclosure not supporting large capacity drives

If it is the USB drive, and it is size-related, then the USB drive is failing to correctly process a sector write (and probably read, too) request. The file size does not matter. The cause is that the larger file has "pieces" falling beyond the addressable boundary.

Due to disk fragmentation, it is difficult to confirm or deny this hypothesis, but you can try with any tool which displays the disk fragmentation map. This should display a large disk with the beginning which is filling up, and nothing past a certain point. Not at the end, especially.

On a FAT32 disk you could try and fill the disk with small files, each 8Kb in size, until the "reachable" area was filled up and the disk became unwriteable. But the disk is NTFS and however the method isn't really very precise, or certain.

If at all possible, I would mount the disk on a Linux live distribution. At that point you could try and read the disk one sector at a time:

fdisk -l

will tell you how many 512-byte blocks are there in the external disk. Then

dd bs=512 if=/dev/sdc of=test skip=NNNNN count=1

will request a read of sector NNNNN (one-based :-) ).

If it is a matter of a limit to NNNNN, you will observe that:

N=1         it works
N=MAX_NUM   it fails
N=MAX_NUM/2 it fails

...

so you can start with a classic bisection algorithm and determine where the critical sector "C" lies (any sector before C is readable, any after is not). If such a sector exists, you've got either an incredibly weird hardware damage, or the proof you were looking for of the enclosure's guilt.

Update - finding the boundary by bisecting: an example

So let's say the disk is 4TB, so 8,000,000,000 sectors. We know that sector 1 is readable and sector 8-billion isn't. Let READABLE be 1, let UNREADABLE be 8. Then the algorithm is:

 let TESTING be (READABLE + UNREADABLE)/2
 if sector TESTING is readable then READABLE becomes equal to TESTING
 else, UNREADABLE becomes equal to TESTING.
 Lather, rinse, repeat with the new values of (UN)READABLE.
 When two consecutive values of TESTING are obtained, that's your boundary.

Let's imagine the boundary lies at sector 3,141,592,653 because of some strange bug in the enclosure.

 first pass: testing = (1 + 8000000000)/2 = 4000000000.
 4,000,000,000 is unreadable, so replace 8,000,000,000 with 4,000,000,000
 second pass: testing (1 + 4M)/2 = 2M
 sector 2M is readable, so replace 1 with 2,000,000,000
 third pass: testing (2M + 4M)/2 = 3M
 sector 3,000,000,000 is readable
 fourth pass: testing (3M + 4M)/2 = 3,500,000,000 which is UNREADABLE
 fifth: (3 + 3.5) / 2 = 3,250,000,000 UNREADABLE
 ...

So READABLE and UNREADABLE stalk the unknown boundary more and more closely, from both directions. When they are close enough you can even go and try all the sectors in between.

To locate the boundary, only log2(max - min) = log2(4TB - 0) = log2(4TB) = log2(2⁴⁰) = 40 (actually I think perhaps 42) sectors need to be read. Given a 30" reset delay on the enclosure when a reading error occurs, that should be 20 minutes at the most; probably much less.

Once you have the boundary B, to confirm it is a boundary you can do a sequential read of large chunks before B (this will not take too long), maybe one megabyte every gigabyte or so; and then a random sampling of sectors beyond B. For example the first 4*63 sectors beyond the boundary, then one sector every 3905 (or every RAND(4000, 4100) ) to try to avoid hitting always the same magnetic platter.

But actually, if you do find a boundary-like behaviour, and confirm that with another enclosure there is no such boundary -- well, I'd declare the case (en)closed.