I've been running several Linux and BSD guests and one Windows XP SP3 guest on a single ESXi 4.1 host without a hitch for a couple of years. About a month ago, my Windows XP guest started crashing. The crashes usually occur when I'm working with files in Windows Explorer, e.g., right-clicking to view file properties, renaming a file, attaching a file to an email, etc. The guest reboots, and when I connect again via RDP, there are no signs of a crash having taken place--no event log entries, no dumps, etc--in the guest OS. I'm currently defragmenting the hard drives and running a malware scan. Unfortunately, I don't have VCenter Server installed, which, I think, would give me better error reporting than I have. I've tried weeding through the VMware logs on the host, but I don't know what I should be looking for. Can anyone help me to get to the bottom of these crashes, maybe by suggesting which log file I should look at on the host? I'm happy to provide any additional information that would be helpful. Thanks!
Update: No malware found. Disks defragged. I was using RDP to remote into this guest, but now I'm using LogMeIn to see if it makes a difference. I'll also try RDP without sharing local resources to see if it's more stable. Seems to me, though, that if RDP or malware were causing the crashes, there would be evidence in the event logs.