Windows Virtual Machines console access hangs with a black screen or Windows pre-login page

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Unable to RDP or access VMRC console for the affected VMs.
• The web console works if the session is active. The same screen-hung is seen if the user logouts and logs back in.
• vmware.log shows the below errors

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-51 1125: Guest: 2023-03-06711:47:14.03991 Thread ID: 7852 VM3DDevApiInit: devApiInit failed with 0xc0000001 
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-71 1125: Guest: 2023-03-06T11:49:03.00161 Thread ID: 6712 |VM3DDevApiInit: devApiInit failed with 0xc0000001 
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-61 1125: Guest: 2023-03-08T14:11:21.07861 Thread ID: 13536 VM3DDevApiInit: devApiInit failed with 0xc0000001 
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-61 1125: Guest: 2023-03-08T14:14:15.04191 Thread ID: 15008 |VM3DDevApiInit: devApiInit failed with 0xc0000001 
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS vcpu-11 1125: Guest: 2023-03-20T09:53:18.03341 Thread ID: 2880 VM3DDevApiInit: devApiInit failed with 0xc0000001

• Windows Event Viewer shows the desktop Windows process manager has exited.

 

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

The win32 kernel is blocked during a session switch waiting on an HID device (Human Interface Devices (HID) - Windows drivers) to be cleaned up.

Resolution

The code has been rewritten entirely in Server 2019 and newer versions. Please upgrade to WS2019 or later.
If the issue is seen in more recent versions of Windows, contact Microsoft support.