Virtual Disk Service Loader has stopped working

diskmanagementvmware-vspherewindows-server-2008-r2

We have several relatively recent (less than 1 week) installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise that are getting this error whenever we open Disk Management. The application name is vdsldr.exe and the Problem Event Name is BEX64.

The windows firewall was turned off and the service disabled. The Virtual Disk service was started (identical results when it is stopped). The computers are virtual machines running on VSphere, so that could be part of the problem.

The strange thing is that Disk Manager worked fine when the VMs were first created.

Task Manager also seems to be crashing on these machines. The problems are occuring on multiple VMs that are on different physical hosts.

Best Answer

Sophos Antivirus 7.6.18 (Updated 4/15/2010) seems to be causing these problems. On a fresh build the problems don't occur until it is installed and uninstalling it fixed the problem.