Window 10 VM freezes using SPICE from another Windows 10 PC

ryanbin

New Member
Apr 11, 2023
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Hi, I have a very specific issue that I'm banging my head against. Whenever I set up a Windows 10 VM on PVE following the best practices, configure it to use SPICE for video, then try to connect from a physical Windows 10 PC using virt-viewer, the VM will lock up within minutes. If I use noVNC from the same physical PC, no lock ups. If I access the VM from a Linux machine using virt-viewer or noVNC, no lockups. It's only accessing a Windows 10 VM from a Windows 10 PC using SPICE that causes it to freeze.

It didn't used to do this, so my gut feeling is that something got updated (and broke), but I'm not sure if it's on the PVE side or SPICE or somewhere else. Both Windows machines are 22H2 (although I've tried it on earlier versions with the same problem), and I'm using the virtio-win-0.1.229.iso for the VM drivers and spice-guest-tools. On the physical Windows 10 PC, I have virt-viewer-x64-11.0-1.0 installed (also tried an earlier version with no luck).

Here's my pveversion -v

proxmox-ve: 7.4-1 (running kernel: 5.15.104-1-pve) pve-manager: 7.4-3 (running version: 7.4-3/9002ab8a) pve-kernel-5.15: 7.4-1 pve-kernel-5.15.104-1-pve: 5.15.104-1 pve-kernel-5.15.102-1-pve: 5.15.102-1 pve-kernel-5.15.30-2-pve: 5.15.30-3 pve-kernel-5.13.19-6-pve: 5.13.19-15 ceph-fuse: 15.2.16-pve1 corosync: 3.1.7-pve1 criu: 3.15-1+pve-1 glusterfs-client: 9.2-1 ifupdown2: 3.1.0-1+pmx3 ksm-control-daemon: 1.4-1 libjs-extjs: 7.0.0-1 libknet1: 1.24-pve2 libproxmox-acme-perl: 1.4.4 libproxmox-backup-qemu0: 1.3.1-1 libproxmox-rs-perl: 0.2.1 libpve-access-control: 7.4-2 libpve-apiclient-perl: 3.2-1 libpve-common-perl: 7.3-4 libpve-guest-common-perl: 4.2-4 libpve-http-server-perl: 4.2-1 libpve-rs-perl: 0.7.5 libpve-storage-perl: 7.4-2 libspice-server1: 0.14.3-2.1 lvm2: 2.03.11-2.1 lxc-pve: 5.0.2-2 lxcfs: 5.0.3-pve1 novnc-pve: 1.4.0-1 proxmox-backup-client: 2.4.1-1 proxmox-backup-file-restore: 2.4.1-1 proxmox-kernel-helper: 7.4-1 proxmox-mail-forward: 0.1.1-1 proxmox-mini-journalreader: 1.3-1 proxmox-offline-mirror-helper: 0.5.1-1 proxmox-widget-toolkit: 3.6.5 pve-cluster: 7.3-3 pve-container: 4.4-3 pve-docs: 7.4-2 pve-edk2-firmware: 3.20230228-2 pve-firewall: 4.3-1 pve-firmware: 3.6-4 pve-ha-manager: 3.6.0 pve-i18n: 2.12-1 pve-qemu-kvm: 7.2.0-8 pve-xtermjs: 4.16.0-1 qemu-server: 7.4-3 smartmontools: 7.2-pve3 spiceterm: 3.2-2 swtpm: 0.8.0~bpo11+3 vncterm: 1.7-1 zfsutils-linux: 2.1.9-pve1

And here's the config from the Windows 10 VM:

agent: 1 bios: ovmf boot: order=scsi0;net0 cores: 2 cpu: host efidisk0: local-lvm:vm-102-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=4M machine: pc-q35-7.2 memory: 4096 meta: creation-qemu=7.2.0,ctime=1681066986 name: Win10 net0: virtio=86:7D:23:60:E9:E1,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1 numa: 0 ostype: win10 scsi0: local-lvm:vm-102-disk-1,cache=writeback,discard=on,size=40G scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci smbios1: uuid=9973931f-d936-4041-98a0-fd5920995870 sockets: 1 tpmstate0: local-lvm:vm-102-disk-2,size=4M,version=v2.0 vga: qxl vmgenid: 47aa605e-b824-4ba0-a6e6-7e8d66efe653

Really hoping someone can help. I can get by using noVNC for now, but really prefer SPICE. One other weird wrinkle: I have GNS3 (network emulator) set up as a VM on PVE. I can install Windows 10 clients in GNS3 and access them using SPICE from that same physical PC just fine. No lockups.
 
So, finally found the (surprisingly simple) answer in case anyone else is having this issue: increase the qxl memory (vgamem_mb) value. The default is 16 MB; increasing it to 64 MB worked for me. You can do it in the proxmox GUI under VM settings-->Hardware-->Display (see image). Hope this helps someone else!

Screenshot at 2023-12-27 15-20-13.png
 
Last edited:
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Wow, you saved a lot of people a lot of time. My Windows Server 2022 was freezing after installing Spice Guest Tools regularly. Made me question using Proxmox altogether. I searched around and was about to go down some rabbit holes; then your post popped up in search. Increasing the display memory stopped the freezing. I have mine set to 128MB.

Many thanks for coming back to your post and providing the solution 8 months later. Acts like yours make the internet great!
 
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