I have an ESXI 4.0 host server which hosts about 60 VMs running Windows XP sp3. I have modified the local WSUS policies on each VM which check for and install any available MS security patches every weekend. If patches are available, they are installed and the VMs automatically reboot afterwards. My problem is that at least half of the VMs hang while shutting down and are unavailable via RDP. The only way to revive these VMs is restarting them from the console. Sometimes the console is just a blank blue screen, other times it says "Windows is shutting down".
It doesn't happen every time with the same VMs, sometimes they reboot just fine, other times they hang while trying to reboot. Anyone have any suggestions as to why this is happening? Manually rebooting 30-40 VMs is time consuming, I'd rather they reboot normally like they should.
thanks in advance,
Ben