Windows VM may hang with an interrupt storm when a Virtual USB 2.0 controller is configured

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• A Windows virtual machine becomes unresponsive (hangs).

• Windows OS Dump and VMkernel dumps indicate that an interrupt storm (infinite loop) is occurring in the VMM process related to the virtual USB controller.

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0

Virtual USB 2.0 controller is added to the Windows virtual machine hardware.

Cause

This issue occurs due to a corner-case interaction between the guest OS driver and the ESXi virtual UHCI/EHCI (USB 2.0) emulator. The internal state inconsistency prevents the End of Interrupt (EOI) from being processed correctly, which leads to a software interrupt storm within the VMM process itself.

Resolution

VMware Engineering is currently investigating the cause and fix.

Workaround: Remove the "Virtual USB 2.0 controller" from the Virtual Machine settings.

Note: A Virtual USB 3.0 (xHCI) controller alone can support USB 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 devices. Removing the Virtual USB 2.0 controller will not impact the functionality of USB devices if a Virtual USB 3.0 controller is present.