VMWare Server: The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF).

18Feb/099

VMWare Server: The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF).

Having just rebooted my laptop, I clicked on the link to open VMWare Infrastructure Web Access in the my browser and was slightly puzzled by the "page cannot be displayed" error. I figured it was probably the VMWare Server Web Access service not starting for some reason, so I opened services.msc and checked it out. The Web Access service was actually running, but the Host Agent service was not, so I tried to start it - it failed. Dutifully opening Event Viewer for some more information I found the error:

The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF).

Great. Thanks for the elaboration. Time to check the VMWare logs, (c:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMWare Server\) - the most recent of which contained the following entry:

[2009-02-18 10:55:27.908 'App' 4408 info] Trying hostsvc
[2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 panic] error: not well-formed (invalid token)
[2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 panic] backtrace:(backtraces not supported)
[2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 info] Win32 service stopped

A bit of Googling pointed me in the right direction, "not well-formed" refers to the XML config files which are stored in c:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMWare Server\hostd, after that it was just a case of opening each one in turn until I found the malformed one. I backed it up and replaced it with a default version, and lo and behold, my services started!

The VMWare Server: The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF). by DefinIT, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Posted by Sam McGeown

Tagged as: VMWare Leave a comment

Comments (9) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

best
March 9th, 2009 - 13:01

fantastic stuff.. this plagued me as well.. turned out to be the datastores.xml fine was corrupted/empty. There was however another version of the file called datastores.xml.default. so i just renamed that to be datastores.xml and started the VMware Host Agent. Perfect, Thanks!!

( REPLY )
mack
March 30th, 2009 - 16:02

had the same problem, corrupt datastores.xml file, moved it out and started the VMware Host Agent.
Worked a charm….Thanks!

( REPLY )
Mak
June 11th, 2009 - 10:16

Thanks to all of you for taking the time out to share this with all of us! This fixed my problem within minutes!

( REPLY )
Roberto
June 16th, 2009 - 19:58

Thanks very much, this solution solved my problem. Perfect.

( REPLY )
James
June 29th, 2009 - 12:33

Datastores.xml was the problem in my case as well.

The only difference was the message error I got:

The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error %%-1.

Oh well, maybe it’s a Windows 7 RC x64 compatibility thing…

( REPLY )
dalmo
August 24th, 2009 - 01:59

Hi,
The datastore on my system had several [null]..[null] entries.
I deleted it. The service Vmwware host agent started and everything is just working.
Dalmo

( REPLY )
John
February 22nd, 2012 - 14:23

You guys rock.

thanks,

( REPLY )
- JM
  August 10th, 2012 - 16:56
  
  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It works for me too. After some day trying other ways.
  
  JM
  
  ( REPLY )
codeplexer
March 5th, 2013 - 06:50

Just FYI, the C:\ProgramData is a hidden folder. Just type the folder name in the Explorer bar Address text box it will appear. Mine do not have the datastores.xml.default so I just rename the datastores.xml to something else like corrupted_datastores.xml

and then restart the service, it works again.

( REPLY )