Citrix Provisioning Services + VMware Tools upgrade: BSOD

When VMTools are upgraded/installed it sets the registry key:
HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesvmxnet”START” to DWORD:00000003. By resetting this to its previous value of dword:00000000 (i.e. its value before the upgrade) it stopped the BSOD. You have to upgrade VMTools and make this change before restarting the machine.

Setting the START key to 3 will cause the system to not load the vmxnet driver until someone manually starts it, ie “net start vmxnet”. The value of 0 means that the driver will be loaded at system boot along with all the other boot mode drivers and is considered critical to the system booting successfully.

To set this registry key you can boot into “last known good configuration” with F8 during the startup of Windows.

Thanks to Charles Batchelor and Keith Pasquill in this thread.

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XenDesktop+VMware Hosting Infrastructure+Windows 7: Black screen after logging in

Solution: install the SVGAII driver:

1. Open Device Manager from Control Panel
2. Expand Display Adapters entry
3. Right click on VMWare SVGA 3D (WDDM) and click properties
4. Click on Uninstall Button
5. Check the “Delete the driver software for this device” option
6. Click OK
7. Your screen may flicker as the driver is removed.
8. Close Device Manager and reboot Windows 7.
9. Windows will default to the Standard VGA device
10. Open Device Manager, expand Display Adapters
11. Right Click Standard VGA and select Properties
12. Click on Update Driver
13. Click on Browse my Computer
14. Browse to directory C:Program FilesCommon FilesVMwareDriversvideo
15. Click Next
16. Confirm driver installation
17. Close window and reboot

Thanks to Ryan Gallier!