Many people are reporting issues with Ubuntu 16.10 and VMware Workstation 12.5.1 where Ubuntu is unable to boot because SMBus Piix4 controller error. How do you resolve this error and allow Ubuntu Yakkety Yak to boot?
This brief tutorial shows you how to quickly resolve Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and VMware Workstation Pro error where Ubuntu failed to boot up properly. Currently there’s not fix, only a workaround.
If you find yourself in the same situation where Ubuntu 16.10 won’t boot up with running as a virtual guest machine on VMware Workstation Pro, continue below to learn how to resolve it.
To resolve, boot into Ubuntu Recovery Mode. To do that, boot up Ubuntu while holding down the left shift key. this will allow Ubuntu to show GRUB boot option on the screen. Next select *Advanced options for Ubuntu
Next, scroll down to *Ubuntu, with Linux 4.8.x.x-generic (recovery mode)
Next, scroll down and select root to drop into the root shell
Next, run the commands below to remount the shell with root privileges
mount -o remount,rw /
Then run the commands below to open the kernel blacklist file
nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
When the file open, type the line below anywhere in the file and save.
blacklist intel_powerclamp
Reboot and the next time Ubuntu boots up, it should continue successfully.
Virtual Machines running Linux kernel version 4.7 or above may crash during installation or during power-on with a crash in the intel_powerclamp driver. This issue has been reported with Ubuntu 16.10, but it is a generic Linux kernel issue.
Enjoy!
