VMWare Player 17.5.1 - VMs not starting after update

[Julian Falk]

Hello,

today our VMWare Players were updated to version 17.5.1, and immediately after the update we recieved calls about VMs no longer starting. When trying to start the VMs now they will get to the point of the Windows boot manager an then just freeze. The only way to get out of the freeze is to kill VMware through taskmanager.

We then tried to uninstall the newest update and downgrade to version 17.5.0. But when trying to uninstall version 17.5.1 the package always runs into an error and doesnt uninstall.
When looking into the problem we discovered that the process "vmware-vmx" is running, and cannot be closed. Even with full admin access. After using a 3rd party tool to kill the process, we were finally able to uninstall the new version and install the old version manually.
When we upgraded to the new version manually the problem doesnt appear anymore, but upgrading via intune using the package the problem appears again.

[Adam Cook (Patch My PC)]

Hi Julian,

Thank you for making us aware of this. Have you contacted VMWare for support and notified them of a potential bug?

[Julian Falk]

Hello,

yes VMWare support has been contacted.