Windows virtual machine may crash while modifying VMX properties using PowerCLI. |

There are certain advance feature those can only be modify when virtual machine is powered off, e.g. enabling feature such as disk.EnableUUID to True. This feature may not available when VM is created using host UI. Refer KB

VMware PowerCLI allows VM advance features to enable even though virtual machine is powered on. Sample PowerCLI to enable disk.EnableUUID to True.

Get the feature if enabled.

get-vm w2016 | Get-AdvancedSetting -name disk.EnableUUID

Enable if disabled.

Get-vm w2016 | New-AdvancedSetting -name disk.EnableUUID -Value 'TRUE'

Note: w2016 is the VM name in above two example.

If advance feature are enabled using PowerCLI when VM is powered on then their is high chance of PSOD where is disk related operation is carried out (such as increasing disk space). Following lines can be seen in VMware log.

2019-07-12T18:48:54.897Z| svga| I125: MKSScreenShotMgr: Taking a screenshot
2019-07-12T18:48:56.373Z| vcpu-0| I125: HBACommon: First write on scsi0:0.fileName='/vmfs/volumes/vvol:2ad2ef8edfc23177-80e9e9163f4e1927/rfc4122.d714a857-fdf1-4c4a-89d6-2bd3add20803/w2016.vmdk'
2019-07-12T18:48:56.373Z| vcpu-0| I125: DDB: "longContentID" = "70898594980db40092db5f5b1e156b29" (was "7b74cf6d8a34631196c3c1341ed7b901")
2019-07-12T18:48:56.384Z| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-CHAIN : DiskChainUpdateContentID: old=0x1ed7b901, new=0x1e156b29 (70898594980db40092db5f5b1e156b29)
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115: WinBSOD: Synthetic MSR[0x40000100] 0xef
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115+
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115: WinBSOD: Synthetic MSR[0x40000101] 0xffffc705f35f3840
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115+
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115: WinBSOD: Synthetic MSR[0x40000102] 0x0
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115+
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115: WinBSOD: Synthetic MSR[0x40000103] 0x0
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115+
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115: WinBSOD: Synthetic MSR[0x40000104] 0x0
2019-07-12T18:48:58.940Z| vcpu-1| W115+
2019-07-12T18:48:59.943Z| svga| I125: SVGA-ScreenMgr: Screen type changed to RegisterMode

If you are using PowerCLI then make sure VM is first powered off then enable advance feature to avoid unnecessarily BSOD (Blue screen of death) on virtual machine.