VMware Tools: Default disk timeout settings

On a new Windows Server 2003 server without the VMware Tools installed, there are no TimeOut settings configured.

You can find this setting in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Disk\

The picture below, you’ll see the default settings from Microsoft:

After the installation of the VMware Tools, a new dword value called TimeoutValue is added with the hexadecimal value of 3c. This value represents a timeout of 60 seconds.

On a Linux VM the default timeout is 60 seconds (on a CentOS setup). You can find the timeout settings in:

/sys/block/<disk>/device/timeout

After the installation of the VMware Tools, the timeout value is changed to 180 seconds.

More info about this subject can be found here:

• KB1014