Since installing VPC SP1, I've seen my saved VPC images fail to come out of the saved state after hibernation. The systems do not respond to mouse or keyboard commmands. I can click the Action menu and send a control-alt-delete, to which the system responds, but since the keyboard and mouse aren't functioning, I can do nothing else. This forces me to turn off the virtual machine the hard way.
I decided to sort this, and my notes follow. After rebooting the host before each test, VPC:
- Starts, pauses and un-pauses normally.
- Starts, pauses, closes (saving state) and restores normally.
- Starts and pauses normally. I hibernated the host (leaving the VPC and the VPC console on the desktop). Coming out of hibernation, the VPC un-pauses abnormally; requiring closing the VPC window and turning off the virtual machine.
- Starts, pauses and closes (saving state) normally. I hibernated the host (with VPC console open). Coming out of hibernation, the VPC un-pauses abnormally; requires closing the VPC window and turning off the virtual machine.
- Starts, pauses and closes (saving state) normally. I hibernated the host (with VPC console closed and VirtualPC.exe out of memory). Coming out of hibernation, the VPC un-pauses normally.
So, the issue appears to be with the VirtualPC.exe file not playing well with the hibernation process. Note that in each of the previous tests, I started with a new boot of the virtual machine.
Without going into insane detail here, I confirmed that as long as VirtualPC.exe is out of memory during a hibernation interval, I can:
- Start, pause, un-pause and shut down a VPC image normally.
- Start, pause, close (saving state). Close both the the VPC window and the VPC console, and hibernate. Coming out of hibernation, I can restart the saved state of the machine normally.
Just to make sure, I saved the state of a VPC and suspended my laptop by closing the cover. The behavior was the same as under hibernation.
Despite the workaround of having to save and shut down VPC images, the VPC SP1 upgrade is valuable. With it, you can optimize the VPC image (zeroing out slack space and compacting VPC images without a third-party utility), saving disk space and reducing the amount of time handling the VHD files.