Fixing an unexpected signal 10 error in Fusion

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• You cannot resume a suspended virtual machine.
• You cannot power on a virtual machine after a power failure.
• A virtual machine does not power on after a Fusion upgrade.
• Your virtual machine does not resume after being restored from backup, or being moved from another Mac.
• Your virtual machine does not power on.
• When resuming a suspended virtual machine, you see one of these errors:
   
  • VMware unrecoverable error (vmx): unexpected signal 10
  • VMware unrecoverable error (vmx): unexpected signal 11
  • NOT_IMPLEMENTED bora/devices/mainmem/mainMemCpt.c:1242
  • ASSERT bora/lib/checkpointdumper/dumper.c:2203
  • VMware Fusion has encountered an error and has shut down Windows
  • Cannot find a valid peer process to connect to
     
• You see a log error similar to:
  
  Failed to read saved memory 'virtual machine path/virtual machine name-Snapshotx.vmem'

Environment

VMware Fusion 11.x
VMware Fusion 3.x
VMware Fusion 4.x
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Fusion 7.x
VMware Fusion Pro 10.x
VMware Fusion 2.x
VMware Fusion Pro 8.x
VMware Fusion Pro 11.x
VMware Fusion 6.x
VMware Fusion 8.x
VMware Fusion 5.x

Resolution

This error is usually caused due to corruption of the virtual machine suspended state file. To resolve this error, you must remove the suspended state file. To the virtual machine, this is like turning off the power. Any unsaved changes are lost.

Note: These steps require you to make permanent, irreversible changes to your virtual machine. Before proceeding, you may want to backup your virtual machine. For more information, see Best practices for virtual machine backup (programs and data) in VMware Fusion (1013628).

To delete the suspended state file:

1. Locate your virtual machine bundle. For more information, see Locating the virtual machine bundle in VMware Fusion (1007599).
2. Quit Fusion if it is still open.
3. Control-click the virtual machine bundle and choose Show Package Contents.
4. Delete any files and folders that end in:
    
   • .lck
   • .vmss
      
5. Open Fusion and start the virtual machine.

Note:

• For Fusion 6.x, you can force shutdown the virtual machine to remove the suspended state automatically. Press and hold the Option key on the keyboard and click on Virtual Machine > Force Shutdown.
• For Fusion 8.x and later you can force shutdown the virtual machine to remove the suspended state automatically. Press and hold the Option key on the keyboard and click on Virtual Machine > Power off.

 

If the preceding steps do not resolve the issue, you must manually edit the virtual machine's .vmx file to ensure that it's not looking for the suspended state information:

1. Open your .vmx file for editing. For more information, see Editing the .vmx file for your Fusion virtual machine (1014782).
   
   Note: In Editing the .vmx file for your Fusion virtual machine (1014782), you can ignore Step 1. If the Finder window where you opened the virtual machine bundle is still open, you can ignore steps 1-4.
    
2. Find the line that starts with:
   
   checkpoint.vmState
    
3. Remove everything between the quotation marks so it looks like:
   
   checkpoint.vmState = ""
    
4. Save and close the .vmx file.

Additional Information

A virtual machine's suspended state file can become corrupt for any number of reasons. This corruption can occur if the suspend operation fails or does not complete (for example, if the Mac sleeps due to low power before the suspend finishes). This corruption can also occur if the host environment changes while the virtual machine is suspended. For instance, moving a suspended virtual machine, upgrading Fusion while a virtual machine is suspended, moving a suspended virtual machine between Macs, and upgrading your Mac's hardware or software while your virtual machine is suspended can all cause this error because the virtual machine is not being resumed in the same environment in which it was suspended.
Locating the virtual machine bundle in VMware Fusion
Best Practices for virtual machine backup (programs and data) in VMware Fusion
Editing the .vmx file for your VMware Fusion virtual machine
Contents of the virtual machine bundle in Fusion