Problem with Virtual Machine Monitor

  • Thread starter Thread starter Thomas M.
  • Start date Start date
T

Thomas M.

XP Pro SP2

First off, let me say that I'm not sure this is a true hardware issue, but
since it shows up in Device Manager I thought that I would start by posting
a message in this group.

This is not a critical issue at all, but it's one of those things that got
me curious and I've done a lot of research in an attempt to satisfy that
curiosity, but now I've hit a road block and need some advice on how to
proceed.

I support a training room that has 12 PCs. The PCs are identical makes,
models, BIOS, OS, etc. Every Saturday the machines get re-imaged. After
the imaging process has completed and the machines have restarted, 10 of the
12 machines come up with:

"Windows has finished installing new devices. The software that
supports
your device requires that you restart your computer. You must restart
your computer before the new settings will take effect."

Rebooting the machine causes the message to go away and the computers work
fine after that, so it's not a big deal. Nonetheless, I got curious about
why 2 of the machines do not exhibit this behavior, so I started digging
into it and I think that I've identified the cause, but I don't know how to
correct the issue on the 10 machines that are getting the message.

I went into the Device Manager on two of the machines that are getting the
message and displayed the hidden devices, and then expanded out the list of
Non-Plug and Play Drivers. There is an exclamation mark by the Virtual
Machine Monitor. So I checked out the properties for the device. On the
General tab the Device Status box indicates:

"This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have
all
its drivers installed. (Code 24)"

On the Details tab I checked all of the options in the drop-down box.
Here's what I noticed for Devnode Flags and Current Power State:

Devnode Flags
DN_HAS_PROBLEM

Current Power State
D3

Here's what I found on the two machines that don't have the problem:

Devnode Flags
DN_DRIVER_LOADED
DN_STARTED

Current Power State
D0

On the 10 machines that get the message, once they reboot they show the same
information for Devnode Flags and Current Power State as the 2 machines that
do not have the problem. So my theory is that setting the Current Power
State to D0 on those 10 machines will resolve the issue.

But I have a couple of problems with this idea. 1) Setting the Current
Power State in Windows will not solve the issue because the machines get
re-imaged, which wipes out that setting. Besides, the machines all get the
SAME image, so if the problem was caused by a Windows setting all the
machines would have the problem. 2) Since all the machines get the same
image it can't be a setting in the image file because, again, if that were
the case all the machines would exhibit the same behavior. In fact, I've
confirmed that on the machine that I used to create the image file, the
Current Power State was set to D0 when the image was created. 3) There are
power settings in the BIOS that appear to map to the Current Power State
setting in Windows, but the imaging process does not touch the BIOS, so if
the underlying problem is with a BIOS setting it's hard to explain why the
problem comes back every time the machines re-image.

So I think that I am on the right track, but I don't know where to go from
here. One thing that I am thinking about is the fact that while the 12
machines appear to be identical, there is bound to be slight differences in
the chipsets used on the respective motherboards, and that might somehow
explain the fact that 10 machines get the message and 2 don't. So I'm
wondering if there is a command line command that I could tack on to the end
of the imaging process that would force out the setting for the Current
Power State. Just a thought...

Any help that you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

--Tom
 
Thomas said:
XP Pro SP2

First off, let me say that I'm not sure this is a true hardware issue, but
since it shows up in Device Manager I thought that I would start by posting
a message in this group.

This is not a critical issue at all, but it's one of those things that got
me curious and I've done a lot of research in an attempt to satisfy that
curiosity, but now I've hit a road block and need some advice on how to
proceed.

I support a training room that has 12 PCs. The PCs are identical makes,
models, BIOS, OS, etc. Every Saturday the machines get re-imaged. After
the imaging process has completed and the machines have restarted, 10 of the
12 machines come up with:

"Windows has finished installing new devices. The software that
supports
your device requires that you restart your computer. You must restart
your computer before the new settings will take effect."

Rebooting the machine causes the message to go away and the computers work
fine after that, so it's not a big deal. Nonetheless, I got curious about
why 2 of the machines do not exhibit this behavior, so I started digging
into it and I think that I've identified the cause, but I don't know how to
correct the issue on the 10 machines that are getting the message.

I went into the Device Manager on two of the machines that are getting the
message and displayed the hidden devices, and then expanded out the list of
Non-Plug and Play Drivers. There is an exclamation mark by the Virtual
Machine Monitor. So I checked out the properties for the device. On the
General tab the Device Status box indicates:

"This device is not present, is not working properly, or does not have
all
its drivers installed. (Code 24)"

On the Details tab I checked all of the options in the drop-down box.
Here's what I noticed for Devnode Flags and Current Power State:

Devnode Flags
DN_HAS_PROBLEM

Current Power State
D3

Here's what I found on the two machines that don't have the problem:

Devnode Flags
DN_DRIVER_LOADED
DN_STARTED

Current Power State
D0

On the 10 machines that get the message, once they reboot they show the same
information for Devnode Flags and Current Power State as the 2 machines that
do not have the problem. So my theory is that setting the Current Power
State to D0 on those 10 machines will resolve the issue.

But I have a couple of problems with this idea. 1) Setting the Current
Power State in Windows will not solve the issue because the machines get
re-imaged, which wipes out that setting. Besides, the machines all get the
SAME image, so if the problem was caused by a Windows setting all the
machines would have the problem. 2) Since all the machines get the same
image it can't be a setting in the image file because, again, if that were
the case all the machines would exhibit the same behavior. In fact, I've
confirmed that on the machine that I used to create the image file, the
Current Power State was set to D0 when the image was created. 3) There are
power settings in the BIOS that appear to map to the Current Power State
setting in Windows, but the imaging process does not touch the BIOS, so if
the underlying problem is with a BIOS setting it's hard to explain why the
problem comes back every time the machines re-image.

So I think that I am on the right track, but I don't know where to go from
here. One thing that I am thinking about is the fact that while the 12
machines appear to be identical, there is bound to be slight differences in
the chipsets used on the respective motherboards, and that might somehow
explain the fact that 10 machines get the message and 2 don't. So I'm
wondering if there is a command line command that I could tack on to the end
of the imaging process that would force out the setting for the Current
Power State. Just a thought...

Any help that you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

--Tom
Click to expand...
A guess from the wild: the BIOS versions on the machines are different.
Unless it's variant chipsets as you conjectured above, what else could
it be?

-- Jeff Barnett
 
Jeff Barnett said:
A guess from the wild: the BIOS versions on the machines are different.
Unless it's variant chipsets as you conjectured above, what else could it
be?

-- Jeff Barnett
Click to expand...

I believe that all the BIOS versions are the same. However, we just started
having an unrelated problem with these machines that might require a BIOS
update. If there is a BIOS update available I'll update all the machines
and see if that fixes this problem as well. Unfortunately, there are
training classes going on in that room for the next two weeks solid. We
don't like to make changes to the machines while there are classes running
because there is always the risk that we could make the problem worse. We
like to wait until we get a few days with no classes so that if we do make
the problem worse, we'll at least have the time to fix what we broke! So
it'll be the week of Christmas before I get a chance to try updating the
BIOS.

--Tom
 
--Tom
I believe that all the BIOS versions are the same. However, we just
started having an unrelated problem with these machines that might require
a BIOS update. If there is a BIOS update available I'll update all the
machines and see if that fixes this problem as well. Unfortunately, there
are training classes going on in that room for the next two weeks solid.
We don't like to make changes to the machines while there are classes
running because there is always the risk that we could make the problem
worse. We like to wait until we get a few days with no classes so that if
we do make the problem worse, we'll at least have the time to fix what we
broke! So it'll be the week of Christmas before I get a chance to try
updating the BIOS.

--Tom
Click to expand...

Actually, I just checked and there are no BIOS updates for these computers.
The available BIOS is the one that shipped with the PCs when they were new.
So that idea is out.

--Tom
 
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