The task VirtualMachine.setScreenResolution failed with A general system error occurred: Undeclare

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• There was a recent VMware Tools upgrade after which you see below failure events triggered in vSphere but these are not bound to any specific Tools version (before and after upgrade).
  
  The task VirtualMachine.setScreenResolution failed with A general system error occurred: Undeclare
  
  
• Frequent alerts are generated indicating a communication or configuration issue between the ESXi host and the guest OS display components.
• vmware.log show failures only when the VM attempts to set a display resolution above 2560 × 1228, but do not indicate which service, application, or Tools component is triggering the resolution change.
  
  <Date> In(05) mks - MVNCRegionEncoder_Create: region encoder static. Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 1485 x 654
<Date> In(05) mks - MVNCRegionEncoder_Create: region encoder adaptive. Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 1485 x 654
<Date> In(05) mks - MVNCRegionEncoder_Create: region encoder adaptive. Screen 0/1 @ Resolution: 1485 x 654
<Date> In(05) vmx - Tools_SetGuestResolution: Sending rpcMsg = Resolution_Set 2560 1228
<Date> In(05) vcpu-0 - TOOLS call to Resolution_Set failed.

• Issue is reproducible by attempting to resize the VMRC window ----> failures occur at higher resolutions with the same error as above.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

One of the known causes is that the affected VM/s may not have sufficient VRAM (video memory) allocated.

Resolution

Follow the steps below to increase VRAM on a per-VM basis and monitor the results. After increasing VRAM on one affected VM, if the error no longer occurs, you may proceed to apply the same steps to the remaining affected VMs. However, if the issue persists even after increasing VRAM on the first VM, please avoid making changes to the other VMs and contact the Broadcom Support Team for further assistance and troubleshooting.

1. Power off the virtual machine.
2. Right-click on the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
3. Click the Hardware tab.
4. Click Video Card.
5. Select Enter total video RAM and enter a higher value than the existing value.
6. Click OK.
7. Power on the virtual machine.