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 7.0
VMware vSphere 8.0

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.