No networking or VMware Tools in a Windows 2008 virtual machine following a reboot

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
A Windows 2008 virtual machine may experience these symptoms after a reboot:

• The virtual machine is unresponsive at startup (during applying computer settings)
• Networking is available inside the guest operating system
• The VMware Tools icon in the system tray has a status of:
  
  not running
  
  
• The fields inside the Server Manager report:
  
  Collecting Information...
  
  
• Automatic services are not started

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

This issue can be caused by a service deadlock in Windows. To confirm, run this command from a command prompt window:

sc querylock

If the output contains IsLocked: TRUE, then the service control manager is in a locked state due to a failed service start.

Resolution

This is not a VMware issue.

To resolve this issue, install the hotfix as described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2379016.