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.
This brief tutorial shows you how to quickly resolve Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and VMware Workstation Pro errors where Ubuntu failed to boot up properly. Currently, there’s no fix, only a workaround.
If you are in the same situation where Ubuntu 16.10 won’t boot up 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 the 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 blocklist file
nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
When the file opens, type the line below anywhere and save.
blacklist intel_powerclamp
Reboot, and it should continue successfully the next time Ubuntu boots up.
Virtual Machines running Linux kernel version 4.7 or above may crash during installation or 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!
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