Beginner looking to autostart VM in Workstation 17.6.0 for Personal Use

[Paul Romero]

Hi all,

I'm excited about trying out VMs for the first time, and I've been a computer user since programming the "bouncing ball" in high school back in '81!

However, I'd like to autostart my Windows VM, and I cant for the life of me figure it out....is this feature even enabled in the free version?

Here is what occurs: When I select File/Configure Autostart VMs, there is nothing listed. (same goes for File/Scan for Virtual Machines...but that is unrelated to this topic).

Here is what I've tried: Reinstalling both VMWare Workstation 17 and the host OS, Windows 11, I have typed in msconfig, brought up the services dialogue box, and I have set VMWare autostart service to automatic and the login to the same administrator account I login to Windows (with it's password) succesfully.

Still, after restart, nothing is listed in the above mentioned menu item.

Here is an idea from what I found in the VMWare help....start the VM using a script:

This is a sample configuration file for the Virtual Machine Autostart
 functionality. You may uncomment the below section and specify the path to
 the vmx files of those Virtual Machine which you want to automatically
 power-on when the host machine starts or whenever the "VMware Autostart
 Service" is started.
 -->
<ConfigRoot>
<AutoStartOrder>
<!-- e id="0">
      <vmxpath>C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Virtual Machines\Windows10x64\Windows10x64.vmx</vmxpath>
      <startOrder>0</startOrder>
    </e>
    <e id="1">
      <vmxpath>C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Virtual Machines\VM2\VM2.vmx</vmxpath>
      <startOrder>0</startOrder>
    </e -->
</AutoStartOrder>
</ConfigRoot>

My VM's vmx file is called: Piggyback PC.vmx and my Workstation 17 install and VM locations are all in the default places.

I dont know how to uncomment this script or know where put it if I knew how.

Could someone please edit it and help me get it to work, or perhaps fix the menu item not listing VMs issue?

Sincerely,

Paul Romero

[louyo]

Never seen that script, but you might use vmrun, you could put it in a cron job:

vmrun -T ws start <path to VM>\<VM Name>.vmx gui

[Paul Romero]

Thanks iouyo,

I am running Windows 11 host OS and VM and my product is Workstation Pro for personal use. I found out that cron jobs are for Linux and vsphere. Can anyone help with my problem?

Thanks,

Paul

[louyo]

Windows has cron jobs, they just name them something else. Like scheduled tasks or somesuch.

[Paul Romero]

Well, thank you ! I am excited to try it out.

Paul

[kasper]

Windows host - use 'Task Manager'.   Have it run 'c:\program files (x86)\VMWare\VMWare workstation\vmware.exe' and give it the parameters you want to start the guest.   Try doing some simple searches on the Internet.   Main reason to post this here is that would be my preferred method as there are others.