Okay, so I'm having a bunch of issues in general with my Windows VMs. There appears to be two patterns emerging:

 

SeaBIOS

- Mostly work fine on initial installation, I can even use it for some time to game

- Fail after a few days to BSODs with SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, and constant reboots, caused by the graphics card

- Perhaps something goes wrong here after a reboot as well?

 

OVMF

- When they crash, and they do, they take unRAID with them

- Will also crash when initializing driver

- Non-persistent boot configuration whenever unRAID goes down, will not boot after a reboot and has to be reinstalled/reconfigured from scratch

 

 

The issues appear to be linked to the initialization of the graphics drivers, on my Nvidia GTX 970. This card should work fine, but it does not. Linux appears to be fine in most cases, although Fedora had some issues after I fiddled around with some drivers and window managers. That said, right now I can boot both my Xubuntu and Fedora VMs (SeaBIOS based) just fine. I upgraded to unRAID 6.1.7 this weekend, and I was hoping for some stability, but thus far no luck.

 

I refer you also to my thread from last week or so: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=45367.0

 

What am I doing wrong? I've had to install Windows 10 10-15 times the past two weeks, I can't help but feel that something is very wrong. I could RMA my GTX 970, but if it is the cause of my issues, why is Linux working fine?

Read your other thread and was wondering if you resolved the HDMI sound suggestion, as I noticed issues until I got it working correctly.  Also not sure if it makes a difference, but I notice in your config you are passing all 4 of your cores to the VM.  Does the behavior change if you only pass 3?  In the interests of full disclosure I am new here, but after spending an entire weekend doing nothing but unraid/W10, I am starting to get the hang of a few things.

Suggestions from any angle are welcome

 

I have not messed with MSI interrupts, and right now I have a SeaBIOS based one working. I'm not using HDMI sound, but it does say to do it anyway. I would also like to try flashing the ROM/BIOS on my GPU, I will report back with results.

 

(Trying the MSI thingy first)

As Thrak said, you should leave one of the cores for unraid. And of course pass through the audio of the GPU also.

Oh, forgot to mention that. I set the CPU cores to 3 since that post, and have not changed it since. Also, I always pass through the audio now too.

 

I have updated the GPU BIOS, luckily Gainward supplies self-installing updates from their website, so it went smoothly. I'm working on setting MSI interrupts now (it was disabled).

 

EDIT: Enabled MSI interrupts, rebooted, still working fine.

 

EDIT2: Getting random BSODs now. First SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, then MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, but in both cases it boots normally again after a reboot. This is on SeaBIOS. Also, has anyone experienced that unRAID switches the vdisk order, so that it doesn't boot?

I assume you have installed the Nvidia drivers inside of your VM?

 

I just setup a windows 10 VM the other day and I have an Nvidia GTX 960, its working fine, I am playing Battlefront 2 no issues, passing through the 960 and my onboard sound. What drivers did you choose when you setup your VM, stable or latest?

 

 

AM

Since installing the drivers often cause the issues, yes.

 

I use the latest stable set, from GeForce Experience. In the previous thread, I also rolled back the drivers in an attempt to fix the issues, but it did not help.

I meant, when setting up the windows VM, you can choose stable or latest drivers, which ones did you choose? These are the system drivers you have to load when you setup windows.

I've been using 0.1.110, I believe it was the recommended version?

First, please try editing your syslinux.cfg and adding iommu=pt after the word append (look for menu default, and a few lines below it you'll see the append line; that's the one to change).

I'm having very similar issues and definitely seems to be linked to GPU or GPU drivers.

 

I am just in the process of getting this set up and it's very frustrating. My Win10 VM was stuck in loop most of the day as I tried to fix it. If I stop passing through the GPU (GTX 760) everything works fine via VNC. I finally removed all nvidia drivers and now I can boot while passing through the GPU. I'm currently in the process of installing the main driver ONLY via geforce experience.

 

Not sure how well this is going to wind up working for me.

 

EDIT: Ok, just installed the graphics driver ONLY and now I am getting the same looping behavior as OP with SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error. Remove passthrough and VNC works fine. Uninstall Nvidia drivers, VM works fine.

I'm having very similar issues and definitely seems to be linked to GPU or GPU drivers.

 

I am just in the process of getting this set up and it's very frustrating. My Win10 VM was stuck in loop most of the day as I tried to fix it. If I stop passing through the GPU (GTX 760) everything works fine via VNC. I finally removed all nvidia drivers and now I can boot while passing through the GPU. I'm currently in the process of installing the main driver ONLY via geforce experience.

 

Not sure how well this is going to wind up working for me.

 

EDIT: Ok, just installed the graphics driver ONLY and now I am getting the same looping behavior as OP with SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error. Remove passthrough and VNC works fine. Uninstall Nvidia drivers, VM works fine.

 

Are you passing through both the GPU AND the HDMI Audio?  I found without both my Win 10 VM would crash.  I also had to enable the MSI on both the GPU and the Audio for Windows to finally play nice.  While I am still encountering random crashing, my config is stable enough to use daily.

Yes, I did that. I have not done MSI yet.

Yes, I did that. I have not done MSI yet.

 

I recommend the MSI fix.  I found it improved stability considerably once I put it in.

Updates abound! Sorry for the delay, I'm preparing to move to a new apartment, so I have less time to mess around with my computers, naturally.

 

Right now, stability looks pretty good. I've rebooted several times, shutdown unRAID and rebooted it to see if I lose any configs. As far as I can see, I haven't gotten any reboot loops or BSODs for a while. I have no tried editing syslinux like jonp suggested though, but I might as well try it. I even got games from network shares to work (enabling visible shares for alternate accounts helped massively).

 

Pretty happy with the results right now, but I'd still like to know what was causing all my issues. And who knows, the BSODs might turn up again. I haven't had any issues since disabling core 0 for VMs though, as I read in another post that unRAID uses it a lot.

 

I want more cores...