Windows virtual machines display Black Screen after booting up in VMware ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• During bootup of a Windows virtual machine, the Virtual Machine Remote Console (VMRC) displays the Windows logo and switches to a black screen afterwards.
• Rebooting or powering off the virtual machine does not resolve the problem.
• Migrating the virtual machine to another ESXi Host does not resolve the issue.
• Other virtual machines on the same ESXi host do not have issues with the VMRC.
• The vmware.log contains messages similar to this one:

[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest OS = 0x5008
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: SVGA_MINI: SVGA FIFO HW Version: host 0x00000000, guest 0x00000000
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Display driver is out-of-date. Disabling 3d.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Current hardware revision: 0.0.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Driver compiled against: 0.2.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Display driver is out-of-date. Disabling 3d.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Current hardware revision: 0.0.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Driver compiled against: 0.2.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: mks| SVGA: Sync FIFO with SVGA disabled

[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| DISKUTIL: scsi0:0 : toolsVersion = 8389
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| TOOLS ToolsCapabilityGuestTempDirectory received 1 C:\WINNT\TEMP\vmware-SYSTEM
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| TOOLS autoupgrade protocol version 2
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| TOOLS setting the tools version to '8389'
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| DISKUTIL: scsi0:0 : toolsVersion = 8389
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| TOOLS installed version 8389, available version 7304
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| TOOLS don't need to be upgraded.
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| TOOLS unified loop capability requested by 'toolbox'; now sending options via TCLO
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| Guest: toolbox: Version: build-621624

[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| ToolsRpcCBGuestlibGetInfo: Unsupported version 3 requested
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: mks| SOCKET 3 recv error 5: Input/output error
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: mks| SOCKET 3 destroying VNC backend on socket error: 5
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vcpu-0| ToolsRpcCBGuestlibGetInfo: Unsupported version 3 requested
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vmx| TOOLS received request in VMX to set option 'synctime' -> '0'
[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS]: vmx| VMXVmdb_LoadRawConfig: Loading raw config

Cause

This issue is caused by the incorrect version of the VMware SVGA driver installed within the virtual machine which comes bundled with VMware tools.

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

1. Boot the virtual machine into Safe Mode.
2. In the Device Manager, change the driver for the VGA card to the standard MS VGA Driver. (An alternative would be uninstalling the driver instead.)

           Note: Please refer to vendor documentation for accessing Device Manager.

3. Reboot the virtual machine.
4. Uninstall the current incorrect version of VMware tools.
5. Install the latest correct version of VMware tools.

Note: The current VMTools mapping to ESXi can be found here - https://packages.vmware.com/tools/versions

Additional Information

For information on booting Windows into safe mode, please see Booting a Windows guest operating system into Safe Mode.
For information on VMware tools installation and a link to package repositories, please see How to install VMware Tools.
For the correct version of VMware tools for the ESXi version, see VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes