Microsoft mounted a recognized problem inflicting blue screens and boot failures in Home windows Server 2022 digital machines (VMs) deployed on VMware ESXi hosts.
Home windows admins first reported experiencing VM begin points [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] after deploying final month’s KB5031364 cumulative replace.
The corporate confirmed the difficulty days later, saying it solely impacts visitor VMs on VMware ESXi hosts with an AMD Epyc bodily processor, the “Expose IOMMU to visitor OS” VMware possibility toggled on, and Virtualization Primarily based Safety and System Guard Safe Launch enabled in Home windows Server 2022.
As Microsoft revealed throughout this month’s Patch Tuesday, the foundation trigger has now been addressed with the discharge of the KB5032198 Home windows Server 2022 cumulative replace.
“This replace addresses a recognized problem that impacts digital machines (VMs) that run on VMware ESXi hosts,” Redmond mentioned.
“Home windows Server 2022 may fail to start out up. The affected VMs will obtain an error with a blue display screen and a cease code: PNP DETECTED FATAL ERROR.”
Short-term workarounds additionally accessible
Home windows directors unable to instantly set up the November 2023 Patch Tuesday updates even have short-term options to bypass this recognized problem.
One method includes toggling off “Expose IOMMU to visitor OS” within the affected digital machines’ settings. But, this workaround is perhaps viable for a restricted set of methods solely, as particular environments require this selection to be enabled by default.
Alternatively, as a final resort, uninstalling the problematic KB5031364 replace can handle the VM boot issues with a major draw back: this will even take away all safety patches deployed with the replace.
In January and December 2022, Microsoft launched out-of-band Home windows Server updates to resolve points blocking Hyper-V VMs from booting and inflicting issues when creating new VMs on particular hosts.
Earlier this 12 months, Microsoft acknowledged an analogous problem impacting VMware ESXi VMs with Safe Boot enabled after the set up of February 2023 cumulative updates.
Subsequently, VMware promptly launched emergency updates for vSphere ESXi to handle the underlying trigger behind the VMs’ incapability to find a bootable working system.
