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"Power on after opening this virtual machine" Does Not Work

Details

The option to Power on after opening this virtual machine does not work for me. Why?

Solution

This option, located under VM > Settings > Options > Power, works only if you open the virtual machine through the command line and not through the user interface.

To start Workstation and power on a virtual machine, run the vmware or vmware.exe command with the -x option, as shown in the following examples. Replace the values that appear in italics with your own.

Linux Startup Example

The following example opens Workstation on a Linux host, powers on a virtual machine named Windows XP Pro, and returns the terminal session to a command prompt with &:

/usr/bin/vmware -x "Windows XP Pro.vmx" &

The quotation marks are required around a file name that contains spaces. If the virtual machine name is WindowsXP.vmx, for example, you can run /usr/bin/vmware -x WindowsXP.vmx &.

Windows Startup Example

The following example opens Workstation on a Windows host, and powers on the virtual machine named Windows Me that user joe created:

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\Programs\vmware.exe -x C:\Documents and Settings\joe\My Documents\My Virtual Machines\Windows Me\Windows Me.vmx"

The quotation marks are required around the entire command because the path names contain spaces.

For more information about command-line startup options, see the command reference in the Workstation user guide:

Keywords

ws500; 1645; urlz

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