Further testing concludes that if I kill the wbvista.exe process it also fixes the vmware crash.

I suspect the crash in the nvidia driver and BSOD are being caused by your machine simply running out of memory.

A user mode app like WindowBlinds wouldn't be capable of crashing a video driver, but it could be using just enough memory to push the machine over the edge.

Possible, but with the same memory settings and WB7 removed, WS7 works perfectly with no issues for hours. As soon as I enable a WB7 theme and perform the same process in WS7, after about 5 mins or so I get the error stating that it "cant write to the VMDK file check if drive is disconnected or on remote storage" and eventually hangs/bsods the machine. This only happens with WB7 running, very odd.

I just repeated the same test of killing the process wbvista.exe while using VMWare Workstation and the error goes away.

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WB details:

Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 7.6
Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 7.8

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 7.1 (build 255 - Windows 7 Edition) - 64 bit OS

(Dell U2410(Digital)) 1 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295

Wblind.dll         2010/04/08 19:07:20
Wblind64.dll         2010/04/08 19:07:34
Wbsrv.dll         2010/04/01 16:43:41
SevenConfig.exe         2010/04/01 16:44:57
Wbload.exe         2010/04/01 16:44:18
Wbhelp.dll         2010/04/01 16:44:07
Tray.dll              2010/04/01 16:44:19
Wbload.dll              2010/04/01 16:43:28
Screen.exe         2010/04/01 16:44:26


What percentage of system memory are you assigning to the guest machine when this issue occurs?

25% - around 1-1.5GB out of the 4GB assigned to VMWare WS. I doubt it's a WS configuration issue as I only need to kill wbvista.exe for the issue to go away.

Killing WBVista (which BTW is a terrible thing to do as you may well cause apps running to crash out) is simply unloading WB.  It should produce the same results as applying Classic or Aero via the WB UI.

If WindowBlinds has been set to exclude an app then almost nothing happens inside that app.  The only other thing would be the system wide impact of having the bitmaps loaded up which naturally will be using some memory.  If you were on a 32 bit OS I would say the DDBs we allocate are reducing the amount of space left for VMWare, but you are on a 64 bit OS so the max limit for DDB space was increased by a huge amount.

Personally I think you may need to contact VMWare regarding this as ultimately thats the app thats throwing an error and they may be able to say what VMWare is being upset about.

We have never had any reports of anything even close to similar to this before and VMWare is used by Stardock internally.

There is a new WB beta build coming out later this week which is obviously worth trying out in case it helps, but I suspect WB is simply exposing some other issue rather than being the root cause of the issue.

I've tested this and could not duplicate the issue.

I'm running it on a Dell Precision Workstation 690. 4GB Ram, Latest build of WB, Windows 7 x64. Video is NVIDIA Quadro FX 570. VMWare Workstation 7.0.1 build-227600.

Running Alluminate by VStyler as my windowblind.

You referenced driver version 197.45. I'm assuming that was a typo as the latest is 197.54 and there is no .45 version located in the archives.

Fired up 3 VM's at the same time.

2 - Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 x86 with 1GB Ram assigned.

1 - Windows XP Pro SP3 with 1GB Ram assigned.

I ran them all for about 1/2 hour and could not make anything goofy happen.

I would suggest trying a different video card in your system if that is feasable.

I am using this driver from NVidia 197.45_desktop_win7_winvista_64bit_international_whql

It could be driver/gfx card related so I might try and remove the driver and use the one built in to win7.

Just another note, I read somewhere people having issue with 6GB memory kits and VMWare WS7. I am running 6GB in my EVGA Classified SLI.

I'll be damned if that's also an issue.

OK,

I removed the beta build of WB7 and installed 7.01 public... The VMWare WS7 issue does not happen anymore

It must be a bug introduced in Build 255 beta?????

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Your computer has a Windows Experience Index base score of 7.6
Your Windows Graphics Experience score is 7.8

WindowBlinds version : WindowBlinds 7.01 (build 247 - Windows 7 Edition) - 64 bit OS

WindowBlinds is installed correctly on this PC
WindowBlinds appears to be activated on this PC
(Dell U2410(Digital)) 1 is attached to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295

Wblind.dll         2010/02/15 20:09:20
Wblind64.dll         2010/02/15 20:09:05
Wbsrv.dll         2009/12/03 19:44:41
SevenConfig.exe         2010/02/15 20:09:57
Wbload.exe         2010/02/02 20:33:18
Wbhelp.dll         2009/10/07 21:35:07
Tray.dll              2009/10/21 15:13:19
Wbload.dll              2009/09/25 14:41:28
Screen.exe         2009/12/03 19:43:26

When excluded everything with 7.01 and 7.09 should be identical.

Are you sure you are running the same skin in 7.01 as 7.09?

Yep, same skin.

Yes, same skin. Only difference is that I'm not running a beta build of window blinds

Nope, still the same error. Maybe this is a VMWS7 issue after all...

What version of VMware Workstation are you running specifically?