NVIDIA vGPU Driver Installation Fails in Windows Guest OS on ESXi 8.0 and later

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading an ESXi 8.0 U3 host to a newer build (e.g., Build 25205845) and updating the NVIDIA vGPU Manager to a newer version, users may encounter the following issues:

• The NVIDIA Windows Guest Driver fails to install within Windows 11 VDI virtual machines.
• Guest-side logs may contain errors such as: `Failed to get device checkpoint buffer`.
• The ESXi host correctly recognizes the physical GPU and the NVIDIA VIB is loaded, but the guest OS does not successfully initialize the driver.
• vMotion operations might fail with the following errors in vmkernel.log:

2026-01-01T01:01:01.000001Z VMotionStream [180359907:7283880299073427794] failed to allocate buffer for destination VMX to receive incoming device checkpoint data from stream 1: Timeout. 
vMotion migration [180359907:7283880299073427794] failed preparing for stream completion: Timeout 
vMotion migration [180359907:7283880299073427794] failed draining stream completion: Failure 
Failed waiting for data. Error 195887137. Timeout. 

Environment

ESXi 8.0 and later

Cause

This issue is typically caused by a version mismatch or the use of an incorrect driver package type within the Guest OS. While the VMware hypervisor layer correctly presents the vGPU hardware to the VM, the driver installation fails if the guest software cannot successfully handshake with the host's vGPU Manager. This is often isolated to the 3rd-party software layer within the Guest OS.

Resolution

To resolve this installation failure, ensure strict alignment between the host and guest NVIDIA components:

1. Verify Driver Branch Alignment: The Guest OS driver must be from the same major release branch (e.g., 595.x) as the NVIDIA vGPU Manager installed on the ESXi host.
2. Validate Driver Package Type: Ensure the driver downloaded from the NVIDIA Licensing Portal is the specific GRID or VDI driver. Standard consumer (GeForce) or Studio drivers are not compatible with vGPU environments.
3. Perform a Clean Installation: During the NVIDIA installation process in the Guest OS:
   • Select Custom (Advanced) installation.
   • Check the box for Perform a clean installation to remove residual registry entries or conflicting files from previous attempts.

Additional Information

Troubleshooting and Support

If the installation continues to fail after verifying version alignment and performing a clean install, the issue is likely rooted in the NVIDIA guest-side driver logic.
Note: Because the VMware hypervisor is successfully presenting the PCI hardware to the virtual machine, the troubleshooting of the internal NVIDIA installer and guest driver initialization falls under 3rd-party vendor support.
Action: Contact NVIDIA Support for further analysis of the guest-side installation logs and driver compatibility.