VMware Fusion Core Disabled?

R

Ruba

Registered
Hi,
I installed VMware Fusion yesterday and converted a Parallels WinXP image to a Fusion image. I was playing around with the software and then turned on 2 virtual processors. After that the virtual machine and the Mac got really slow and I got this weird message that one of the processor cores had been disabled and I had to reboot to get it working. So I turned off the virtual machine when I got the chance. I tried running it again but it gave me the same message. I then restarted the Mac. I am worried now. Is there a chance that Fusion may have damaged a processor core or something? I have been trying to look up this error but cannot find anything on it.

Also, I have been trying to find utilities to read the temperature on both cores but I can't find any. I got a widget called iStat Pro but that only says "CPU A" in the temperature part. Can anyone help me out by shedding some light on this? How can I confirm that the core is not damaged or anything? In System Profiler it still says:

Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2

I would appreciate the help.

Thank you all.
 
Your processor is a single processor, dual core, and it uses one processor when needed, two cores when more active. Unless you have installed and enabled CHUD controls, your Mac deals automatically with how to manage the optimization with the cores (one core on instead of two will increase battery life and reduce power etc).
The only thing where Fusion makes a difference is the amount of VCPUs - the virtual CPUs your virtual machine(s) use.
 
Thanks Gia. I understand what you mean but it still doesn't explain that error message and why I can't find anyone else who has encountered it. That's pretty smart of OSX to deal with core optimization. Is there a utility like cpu-z for my iMac?
 
I'm not sure of hte processor monitors other than the ones already mentioned.
Could you post the exact error messages (screenshot will do too) if you can still encounter it, and Fusion logs (your Virtual Machines folder> this vm> right click to "show package contents", in it vmware.log, vmware-0.log etc, and other files it gathers.. easiest probably using from Fusion menus, Help > collect support information > it will create a file with them on your desktop) - so vmware.log from the virtual machine itself, fusion .log, system.log and console.log containing around when the error occurred on specific (last) time as those will reveal what called for it precisely.
 
Thanks again Gia. I actually got rid of that specific VM folder but I collected the logs for my Ubuntu vm and found the following lines in one of them:

Jan 04 00:56:31.296: vmfusion| HOSTINFO: Seeing Intel CPU, numCoresPerCPU 2 numThreadsPerCore 1.
Jan 04 00:56:31.296: vmfusion| HOSTINFO: This machine has 1 physical CPUS, 2 total cores, and 2 logical CPUs.

So I guess there still are two working cores, at least detectable cores. Have you used iStat Pro? If yes, does it only show you the temp of one physical CPU then and not each core? ifan8gui shows me the temp on each core on my E1705 so that's what got me wondering.
 
Hi Ruba, I haven't actually used iStat but I would think it measures only once the temperature, after all both cores are very close so it would most likely not be a big difference anyway. (I did use CHUD for a while, as disabling one core was the only way to keep a MacBook I was using from rebooting all the time before the firmware for the first generation MacBooks was released).
The vm log and system log are identical for your CPU / core issue; there still is 1 physical CPU, which has 2 cores. If one of the cores would not be working, it would either not be reported at all, or your Mac would get kernel panics or random shutdowns all the time that processor core is enabled.
 
Hey Gia. I guess everything is hunky dory. I just wanted to confirm with someone who had encountered this error or knew about OSX a lot more than I do. Time to run something crazy on the Mac and see what happens. Thanks again and have a great weekend :)
 
you can relax...your processors are not damaged. software wont hurt the processor. its like saying, i really entered a lot of numbers on my calculator, and i am afraid i smoked the calculator (i am talking a real calculator) i think you have a conflict between conversion of parralels to fusion.....something in teh conversion isnt right.. I think therein lies your problem.
 
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