panic early exception 0d rip 10:ffffffff81038879 error 0 cr2 0

A VMWare panic early exception fix for ivy bridge i3, i5, i7

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An update to modern linux kernels including in my case Centos 6.3 generated the following kernel panic on my new ivy bridge i7 laptop.

panic early exception 0d rip 10:ffffffff81038879 error 0 cr2 0

The cause of this is a new feature built into ivybridge processors called SMEP: supervisor-mode execution prevention. Code was recently introduced in the linux kernel to take advantage of SMEP. One workaround is to add the "nosmep" grub boot option. The other option is to just upgrade your VM manager. VMWare Workstation 7.1.6 (the latest) will not boot new linux on ivy bridge processors, but 8.0 will! Nice way to force you to upgrade.

These hints generally work on other VM Managers as well, parallels or virtualbox. You probably just need to upgrade to a newer version.