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:

Sep 04 08:19:45.502: vcpu-0| Guest OS = 0x5008
Sep 04 08:19:52.628: vcpu-0| Guest: SVGA_MINI: SVGA FIFO HW Version: host 0x00000000, guest 0x00000000
Sep 04 08:19:52.643: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Display driver is out-of-date. Disabling 3d.
Sep 04 08:19:52.643: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Current hardware revision: 0.0.
Sep 04 08:19:52.643: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Driver compiled against: 0.2.
Sep 04 08:19:52.644: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Display driver is out-of-date. Disabling 3d.
Sep 04 08:19:52.644: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Current hardware revision: 0.0.
Sep 04 08:19:52.645: vcpu-0| Guest: vmx_fb: Driver compiled against: 0.2.
Sep 04 08:19:52.879: mks| SVGA: Sync FIFO with SVGA disabled

Sep 04 08:20:05.988: vcpu-0| DISKUTIL: scsi0:0 : toolsVersion = 8389
Sep 04 08:20:06.026: vcpu-0| TOOLS ToolsCapabilityGuestTempDirectory received 1 C:\WINNT\TEMP\vmware-SYSTEM
Sep 04 08:20:06.048: vcpu-0| TOOLS autoupgrade protocol version 2
Sep 04 08:20:06.051: vcpu-0| TOOLS setting the tools version to '8389'
Sep 04 08:20:06.057: vcpu-0| DISKUTIL: scsi0:0 : toolsVersion = 8389
Sep 04 08:20:06.057: vcpu-0| TOOLS installed version 8389, available version 7304
Sep 04 08:20:06.057: vcpu-0| TOOLS don't need to be upgraded.
Sep 04 08:20:06.058: vcpu-0| TOOLS unified loop capability requested by 'toolbox'; now sending options via TCLO
Sep 04 08:20:06.058: vcpu-0| Guest: toolbox: Version: build-621624

Sep 04 08:20:49.645: vcpu-0| ToolsRpcCBGuestlibGetInfo: Unsupported version 3 requested
Sep 04 08:20:55.857: mks| Ignoring update request in VGA_Expose (mode change pending).
Sep 04 08:20:59.007: mks| SOCKET 3 recv error 5: Input/output error
Sep 04 08:20:59.007: mks| SOCKET 3 destroying VNC backend on socket error: 5
Sep 04 08:21:24.638: vcpu-0| ToolsRpcCBGuestlibGetInfo: Unsupported version 3 requested
Sep 04 08:21:53.094: vmx| TOOLS received request in VMX to set option 'synctime' -> '0'
Sep 04 08:21:53.113: 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