Win10 VM boot issues upgrading from 6.9.2 to 6.11.5

[mrtech213]

2 minutes ago, SimonF said:

Can you post diagnostics and i will look at them tomorrow.

 

Thank you so much and here is the diagnostic. I'm going to downgrade back to 6.9.2 so I could have the VM boot up with the video card.

 

Do have a question, can I have  vnc primary and secondary 3060, I could still use the VM for gaming and editing? That's what this VM is mainly use for

 

 

wakanda-diagnostics-20230101-1903.zip

[SimonF]

9 hours ago, mrtech213 said:

 

Thank you so much and here is the diagnostic. I'm going to downgrade back to 6.9.2 so I could have the VM boot up with the video card.

 

Do have a question, can I have  vnc primary and secondary 3060, I could still use the VM for gaming and editing? That's what this VM is mainly use for

 

 

wakanda-diagnostics-20230101-1903.zip 156.76 kB · 0 downloads

Did you get output on the secondary screen? One option my be to see if 6.10 works ok, but you will need to do a manual install.

 

May try to setup as multifunction.

 

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by SimonF

[mrtech213]

15 hours ago, SimonF said:

Did you get output on the secondary screen? One option my be to see if 6.10 works ok, but you will need to do a manual install.

 

May try to setup as multifunction.

 

 

I RDP into the VM and when I RDP into the VM when the 3060 was set to secondary. It was detected via GeForce Experience and in Windows. Do you want me to post the VM XML?

[SimonF]

18 hours ago, mrtech213 said:

I RDP into the VM and when I RDP into the VM when the 3060 was set to secondary. It was detected via GeForce Experience and in Windows. Do you want me to post the VM XML?

Did it provide output to the Monitor?

[mrtech213]

9 hours ago, SimonF said:

Did it provide output to the Monitor?

Well I don't have a monitor connected to the video card. I have a 4K HDMI Dummy Plug connected to it. 

 

So before upgrading from 6.9.2, I would just start up parsec into the VM and play games/editing.  I did some testing when upgrading to 6.11.5 and did vnc as primary and 3060 as secondary. Connected to the VM using VNC and verified that the video card was being detected and started parsec. But when trying to connect to the VM via parsec, the screen is just black.  

 

 

 

 

[ghost82]

4 hours ago, mrtech213 said:

and did vnc as primary and 3060 as secondary

I think parsec will not be able to encode the video signal because it detects the qxl virtual gpu.

Just passthrough only the real gpu as primary, install a vnc server inside the vm if you want vnc too, attach the dummy plug to the real gpu.

[smick]

Here's an update on my problem that started the thread. I have my server upgraded to 6.11.5 with the latest MB BIOS but still have persistent issues passing through a graphics card to the Win10 VM.

 

1) I was able to move my Win10 VM to another UnRaid server which boots correctly using my NVidia GT1030. It works fine although the NVidia audio occasionally studders.

 

2) I have added a Radeon RX-560 to my Tower machine. I was able to get Win10 to boot in 6.9.2 with the Radeon but it was unstable and then started freezing during the rotating dots portion of Windows boot. After upgrading to 6.11.5 it will boot with VNC but not with a video card. I have tried both legacy and UEFI boot modes with the RX-560. Previous attempts with the NVidea GT-1030 also failed on this motherboard.

 

I thought it would be interesting to compare the VM boot logs between the two machines. I have two sets of comparison images below with the left side being the Tower non-working VM and the right side is the working VM on my other server. There is an obvious section missing in the non-working version! Any ideas greatly appreciated.

 

The top is legacy mode, bottom is UEFI. Sorry for the tiny text.

 

 

 

tower-diagnostics-20230104-1047.zip

[mrtech213]

14 hours ago, ghost82 said:

I think parsec will not be able to encode the video signal because it detects the qxl virtual gpu.

Just passthrough only the real gpu as primary, install a vnc server inside the vm if you want vnc too, attach the dummy plug to the real gpu.

@ghost82  so I have teamviewer installed on the VM. When having the 3060 as primary the VM doesn't come online. Well it powers on but unable to RDP into it and not showing online within Teamviewer

[smick]

Success! I've finally got my troubled 6.9.2 setup upgraded to 6.11.5. In the end it took the latest mobo BIOS, UnRaid booting Legacy, and a new NVidia GT1030. The BIOS update allowed me to get away from ACS override since my video card and audio are now in their own IOMMU groups. I now have two UnRaid servers running GT1030s and can run the Windows VM on either JIC. Any good ideas on how to best use one to back up the other datawise?

 

The mobo is MSI Carbon Pro AC with with a Ryzen 2700X. By the way, the reason for the GT1030 is its the cheapest video card I can find that does 4K. Down side is it can't be used in Plex for HW decodes.

 

Regarding vfio binding in System Devices; it doesn't seem to matter if I bind the video card or not. Should I just bind everything available so I can use them safely in VMs or only what I know I need or doesn't it matter since if I can bind them they are not used by UnRaid?

 

I would also suggest that when we do a manual flash backup it would be nice to have a pop up option to change the file name to describe the conditions. That would be useful for trouble shooting and make it easy to restore milestone backups. JMTC.

 

Also for problems like this UEFI vs EFI booting is critical. EFI is "legacy" UEFI is new and looks better with smaller text in my case. UEFI = "EFI" directory name in the flash, "EFI-" is legacy. My luck has been with legacy.

 

I used a MAC and virtual PC to create boot flashes and the most reliable method for me was to not use the flash creator but instead format the flash FAT32 on the PC, unzip the back up, copy to the flash, and run the respective boot script from the base flash directory. Sometimes UnRaid backs up as a directory and sometime a zip file so PAY ATTENTION. Look at that flash drive and even try to understand the file structure. That will go a long way to resolving mysterious boot issues. Remember EFI vs EFI-.

 

If you have a random power down issue, you might have the Dynamix S3 Sleep plugin install and sleep enabled. TURN IT OFF in the settings if updating your mobo BIOS. It could be that the old BIOS did not support S3 sleep and the new one does! 

 

I didn't have to specify a "Graphic ROM BIOS" in my VM though I was ready to do that after downloading from techpowerup.com and clearing the header per the SpaceInvaderOne video. So what does that callout do exactly? Does the specified Graphic ROM BIOS supersede the BIOS in the card or does it provide some secondary source of some information to UnRaid?

 

Also double check you have HVM and IOMMU enabled in the BIOS and shown here ESPECIALLY if you updated your BIOS. It might have changed! Get this from the info icon at the top of the screen. HVM goes by many names, for my BIOS it was SVN and it moved after the BIOS update.

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by smick