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Good Evening Community,
Arch is the host, XP is the guest.
Arch x86_64 currrent with pacman -Syu. Followed wiki. VMWare player is in and running fine. VM's imported from an Ubuntu box. XP x32 & x64 as two separate guests, same issue in both. Using ext4 as the filesystems. NVidia graphics.
The VM's themselves operate normally. Until I launch RealFlight G4.5 RC flight sim. This app works under UBuntu 10.10 x64bit and the same rev of VMPlayer.
Issue: Upon launch of the application, the mouse and keyboard both become disabled, and the VM hangs. The kernel is still running because I can see the CPU task bar applet still updating, the CPU load goes to zilch, and the keyboard and mouse operation are lost. On the odd occasion that the application gets beyond initializing the DirectX layer, the application operates normally, and quite well. It's a guarantee though that the system will hang upon exit of RealFLight.
Approximate ratio: Startup hangs = 75% of the time, application exit hangs 100% of the time.
To exit, I'm forced to push the hard-reset on my PC's case.
Things I've tried:
a) Downgrading to kernel 2.6.32-lts
b) Tried VirtualBox . DirectX support isn't quite mature enough, and the shadows and screen graphics are all not correct. But, the application will start and exit normally 100% of the time without hanging.
c) I've done several clean system reinstalls (I've got good off-site backup) and tried KDE, GNome, LXDE, and XFCE4. The mis-behavior sticks with VMWare in the same situations, regardless of WM/DE.
d) Installed the application in XP-x64, with no change in the errant behavior.
e) Changed up the CPU count in the x32 and x64 VM's of Xp. No change in the errant behavior.
f) Googled for vmware player and directx issues without sucess.
What has me puzzled, is that I can install Ubuntu 10.10 on this same box, install VMWare, and the application inside the VM starts, operates, and exits normally.
Reinstall Arch, follow the vmware wiki's, and the errant behavior is re-introduced. It's 100% reproducible on the same hardware. It's not the rev of the graphics driver because in Ubuntu, I PPA the same rev that Arch uses.
As long as I don't launch this Directx application, the VM's operate normally. (I've got a C Compiler in one VM and CAD in the other so I can work them hard, without the hanging issue)
I can't dual-boot as my hardware vendor doesn't provide the "F6" drivers to access the HDD's at installation, and the XP installers (32 & 64 bit) BSOD when they can't access a HDD.
I would sure appreciate any help anyone can offer........I don't know what to try next.
<Next AM edit>
Well after sleeping on it overnight there may bne one thing......Removing the arch nvidia packages, and installing the native driver from NVidia with it's bundled x32 libraries. It's not an Arch package, and I'm grabbing at straws...... Anyone have any other ideas?
</Next AM edit>
Sincerely and respectfully,
Dave
PS: The application uses a USB dongle, so I can't run it in wine. FYI
Last edited by dcbdbis (2011-03-29 15:16:05)
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I carefully removed nvidia and nvidia-utils, and their 23 bit libraries from my system. Then I downloaded and installed the NVIdia drivers from the NVidia website.
The VM's and the flight simulator contained therin work perfectly now... It's not the "Arch Way"...But it workd. I'll post a link in the video section of the vorum to this thread so that the maintainer can see what the difference is.
FYI
Dave..........
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