Error: "CPU has been disabled" when booting or shutting down virtual machines

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

When booting or shutting down a guest operating system, the message The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system appears.

Environment

• VMware Workstation 4.x (Linux)
• VMware Workstation 3.x (Windows)
• VMware Workstation 3.x (Linux)
• VMware Workstation 4.x (Windows)

Resolution

Two events can cause this to happen in your virtual machine.

• This message, when seen in a virtual machine at shutdown time, signifies that the guest operating system shut down normally and that Windows issued a command to shut down the processor. This is normal behavior. When you see the message, you may power off the virtual machine.
• If you see this message when you are starting the virtual machine, and you cannot get the guest operating system to boot at all, a special feature installed on your laptop may be causing this. If you are running VMware Workstation on a laptop computer that has a processor with the SpeedStep feature, your guest operating system may not boot if the SpeedStep control software is enabled in the guest operating system.

This is most often seen in cases where an operating system was initially installed to run on hardware with the SpeedStep feature, then that same installation is used inside a virtual machine -- for example, if you had a dual-boot configuration and are now running one of those operating systems in a virtual machine.

To be able to boot the guest operating system, you need to disable the SpeedStep applet before you run this operating system as a guest operating system. To do so, start the operating system natively and take these steps:

1. In the Control Panel, double-click the Power Options icon. On Windows XP, you may need to click Classic View first.
2. Click the Intel SpeedStep technology tab.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Check the Disable Intel SpeedStep technology control check box.
5. Click OK twice to close the SpeedStep dialog boxes

Additional Information

Understanding the message: The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system (2000542).