Guest has not initialized display (yet)

zappa · Dec 2, 2022

I am trying to use SPICE on a windows 11 vm, but when ever I go over 128 MB of memory I get the following error: "Guest has not initialized display (yet)"
I would like at least 256 or 512 MB so that I can watch YouTube videos and have the audio be in sync with the video.

How can I fix this?

The machine I am running Proxmox VE on is an AMD 3950x, 16GB ram, RTX3060. (So I dont think that is the problem?)

fiona · Dec 2, 2022

Hi,
there is a bug report for this: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3726

Changing machine type to i400fx seems to help, but Windows is very sensible to such things, so I'd first make a backup or snapshot before trying it out.

zappa · Dec 2, 2022

fiona said:
Hi,
there is a bug report for this: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3726

Changing machine type to i400fx seems to help, but Windows is very sensible to such things, so I'd first make a backup or snapshot before trying it out.

Just tried that, but still the same issue, as soon as I go over 128 MB Video memory I get the "Guest has not initialized display (yet)" error message.

zappa · Dec 5, 2022

Is it at all possible to go over 128 MB or ram with SPICE?

I am surprised that more people dont want this, this is really something that should be fixed ASAP.

fiona · Dec 5, 2022

zappa said:
Just tried that, but still the same issue, as soon as I go over 128 MB Video memory I get the "Guest has not initialized display (yet)" error message.

From a quick test, it seems switching to i440fx only helps when SeaBIOS is used, but not with OVMF.

zappa · Dec 5, 2022

fiona said:
From a quick test, it seems switching to i440fx only helps when SeaBIOS is used, but not with OVMF.

Okay, so just to confirm, I need SeaBIOS and i440fx in order to be able to use more then 128 MB or GPU memory?

Are there any disadvantages of changing to SeaBIOS or i440fx when running Windows 11 pro? Performance hits or otherwise?

zappa · Dec 6, 2022

zappa said:
Okay, so just to confirm, I need SeaBIOS and i440fx in order to be able to use more then 128 MB or GPU memory?

Are there any disadvantages of changing to SeaBIOS or i440fx when running Windows 11 pro? Performance hits or otherwise?

I tried creating a new VM with SeaBIOS, i440fx and installing Win11 Pro, changing to SPICE 256mb, again, guest has not initialized display (yet)

So that didnt work.

zappa · Dec 10, 2022

zappa said:
I tried creating a new VM with SeaBIOS, i440fx and installing Win11 Pro, changing to SPICE 256mb, again, guest has not initialized display (yet)

So that didnt work.

Any other ideas? Or do we just wait for the bug to be fixed?

fiona · Dec 12, 2022

zappa said:
Any other ideas? Or do we just wait for the bug to be fixed?

There is a similar issue with memory hotplug. If you are using that, you can try disabling it. Unfortunately, AFAIK nobody had time yet to look into the issue more closely.

Moonwalk1059 · Jul 2, 2023

just to chime in on this:

i have the exact same issue. i need a dual monitor setup and thats worse in that sense as i can only use 64MB per "monitor" (2 * 64 = 128) and that makes it rather slow.

if it helps, this is my vm config:

Code:

balloon: 0
bios: ovmf
boot: order=sata0;ide2;net0
cores: 8
cpu: host
efidisk0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=4M
ide2: local:iso/virtio-win-0.1.229.iso,media=cdrom,size=522284K
machine: pc-i440fx-7.2
memory: 24576
meta: creation-qemu=7.2.0,ctime=1687097175
name: charts
net0: virtio=<snip>,bridge=vmbr0
numa: 0
onboot: 1
ostype: win11
sata0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-1,size=256G
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
smbios1: uuid=<snip>
sockets: 1
tpmstate0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-2,size=4M,version=v2.0
vga: qxl2,memory=64
vmgenid: <snip>

it doesnt matter what i choose for machine type or bios or machine version, the result is always the same:

as soon as i add another MB to the vga memory it freezes at Guest has not initialized display (yet)

any help is very much appreciated.

fiona · Jul 3, 2023

Hi,

Moonwalk1059 said:
just to chime in on this:

i have the exact same issue. i need a dual monitor setup and thats worse in that sense as i can only use 64MB per "monitor" (2 * 64 = 128) and that makes it rather slow.

if it helps, this is my vm config:

Code:

balloon: 0 bios: ovmf boot: order=sata0;ide2;net0 cores: 8 cpu: host efidisk0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=4M ide2: local:iso/virtio-win-0.1.229.iso,media=cdrom,size=522284K machine: pc-i440fx-7.2 memory: 24576 meta: creation-qemu=7.2.0,ctime=1687097175 name: charts net0: virtio=<snip>,bridge=vmbr0 numa: 0 onboot: 1 ostype: win11 sata0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-1,size=256G scsihw: virtio-scsi-single smbios1: uuid=<snip> sockets: 1 tpmstate0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-2,size=4M,version=v2.0 vga: qxl2,memory=64 vmgenid: <snip>

it doesnt matter what i choose for machine type or bios or machine version, the result is always the same:

as soon as i add another MB to the vga memory it freezes at Guest has not initialized display (yet)

any help is very much appreciated.

maybe you have more luck with using VirGL GPU or VirtIO-GPU as the display: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-qm.html#qm_display

Moonwalk1059 · Jul 3, 2023

fiona said:
maybe you have more luck with using VirGL GPU or VirtIO-GPU as the display: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-qm.html#qm_display

Hi Fiona,

thank you for this. i tried those but couldnt find a setting to add a 2nd monitor to any of the two. did i miss something?

thanks!

fiona · Jul 3, 2023

Moonwalk1059 said:
Hi Fiona,

thank you for this. i tried those but couldnt find a setting to add a 2nd monitor to any of the two. did i miss something?

thanks!

Oh, sorry, I missed that. There is a max_outputs property for virtio-vga too, like for qxl, but it's not exposed in Proxmox VE yet.

Feel free to open a feature request on our bugtracker: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/

If you'd like to try it directly (feedback if the below change would already be enough is welcome), you can use (with the ID of your VM instead of 123):

Code:

qm showcmd 123 --pretty > start-vm.sh

change the option

Code:

--- a/start-vm.sh
+++ b/start-vm.sh
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
   -device 'vmgenid,guid=1cd86c7c-2ab2-4e10-a2be-59ad8668f516' \
   -device 'piix3-usb-uhci,id=uhci,bus=pci.0,addr=0x1.0x2' \
   -device 'usb-tablet,id=tablet,bus=uhci.0,port=1' \
-  -device 'virtio-vga,id=vga,bus=pci.0,addr=0x2' \
+  -device 'virtio-vga,id=vga,bus=pci.0,addr=0x2,max_outputs=2' \
   -device 'virtio-serial,id=spice,bus=pci.0,addr=0x9' \
   -chardev 'spicevmc,id=vdagent,name=vdagent' \
   -device 'virtserialport,chardev=vdagent,name=com.redhat.spice.0' \

and then run it directly with

Code:

chmod +x ./start-vm.sh
./start-vm.sh

Of course the command in the start-vm.sh script will not get updated by changes to the VM configuration and starting the VM via UI or qm will not see the max_outputs change.

Moonwalk1059 · Jul 3, 2023

thank you, @fiona , this looks very promising. will check it out and report back!

Kav91 · Jan 3, 2024

Hi @fiona , that solution also gets limited by having a 512MB memory max so you can't get that good performance out of it anyway.
There is another thread and issue here about the limit -> https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/v...-cannot-set-vram-greater-than-512-mib.120716/ .

Would be nice to bump that limit and expose the additional output option or fix the spice issue.

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