Microsoft publicly acknowledged a recognized concern inflicting Home windows Server 2022 digital machine (VM) blue screens and boot failures on VMware ESXi hosts.
Home windows admins reported experiencing VM begin failures [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] after putting in the KB5031364 October 2023 cumulative replace.
Now, Redmond has confirmed these ongoing points, saying that they have an effect on solely VMware ESXi hosts the place admins have put in the replace launched as a part of final month’s Patch Tuesday.
“Affected VMs will obtain an error with a blue display and Cease code : PNP DETECTED FATAL ERROR,” Microsoft stated in an replace to the Home windows launch well being dashboard.
The recognized concern solely impacts VMware ESXi hosts with the next configuration:
- ​AMD Epyc bodily processor
- ​”Expose IOMMU to visitor OS” enabled in VMware settings for the VM.
- ​”Allow Virtualization Based mostly Safety” enabled in Home windows Server 2022.
- ​”System Guard Safe Launch” enabled in Home windows Server 2022.
Microsoft’s engineering staff is engaged on fixing these VM boot issues, with a possible repair someday subsequent week.
Short-term workarounds out there
To mitigate this recognized concern, admins can disable the “Expose IOMMU to visitor OS” possibility in affected VMs’ settings. Nonetheless, this short-term repair solely works on some programs, on condition that some environments require this feature to be enabled.
Home windows directors with impacted units have additionally famous that uninstalling the problematic KB5031364 replace will even resolve the problem (though it would additionally take away all safety patches it deploys), permitting VMs to begin up once more with none issues.
You are able to do this utilizing the Home windows Replace Standalone Installer (WUSA) software, which helps set up and take away replace packages by means of the Home windows Replace Agent API.
First open an elevated command immediate by clicking the Begin menu, typing cmd, right-clicking the Command Immediate utility, and selecting ‘Run as Administrator’, after which run the next command:
wusa /uninstall /kb:5031364
Microsoft additionally issued emergency Home windows Server updates in January and December 2022 to repair recognized points inflicting Hyper-V VMs to not begin and issues whereas creating new VMs on some Hyper-V hosts.
The corporate confirmed an identical concern earlier this 12 months affecting VMware ESXi VMs with Safe Boot after putting in February 2023 cumulative updates.
VMware issued emergency vSphere ESXi updates days later to repair the foundation reason behind the boot points resulting in VMs’ failure to find a bootable working system.
