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:
ICT-Freak.nl 