windows-virtualization-conflict-triage

Windows Virtualization Conflict Triage

Overview

Diagnose virtualization conflicts from the host outward. Verify whether Hyper-V or VBS is active, classify the VMware failure mode, and only then decide between coexistence, import fallback, or host reconfiguration.

Reference Map

• Read references/conflict-map.md to classify the host stack.
• Read references/fallback-matrix.md for OVA, raw-disk, and host-change fallback choices.

Required Discovery

1. Determine whether Hyper-V or VBS is active.
2. Capture the exact VMware failure mode: import failure, vmware-vmx crash, guest-tools issue, or vmrun guest-auth issue.
3. Separate host-level launch failure from guest-level boot failure.
4. Decide whether an OVA fallback or staged import is sufficient before touching host settings.

Preferred Flow

1. Read host virtualization status.
2. Reproduce the VMware failure with logs.
3. Check whether a different import path avoids the failure.
4. Treat host setting changes as a deliberate maintenance window, not an inline experiment.

Stop Rules

• Do not disable Hyper-V or VBS without capturing current host state and rollback steps.
• Do not treat vmrun guest-auth failure as proof that the guest never booted.
• Do not keep iterating on raw VMX edits when an OVA path is cleaner.

Common Mistakes

• Mixing host and guest failures into one diagnosis.
• Forgetting that Docker Desktop and WSL also depend on the host virtualization stack.
• Assuming an imported VM is invalid when the real problem is host coexistence.