VMWare Workstation hangs up guest VMs when running in full screen mode

[ahmd9]

I have a 3-monitor desktop setup running Windows 8.1 (as a host OS.) I use one monitor exclusively to run VMWare Workstation 10. When VMWare first loads up at host PC boot I click "Enter full screen mode" button, which expands it to the size of that monitor. I then usually load several guest OS's into it.

My host OS is set up to show a password protected screensaver after 5 minutes and then turn off the screen after 20 minutes of inactivity.

So what I've been noticing (and yes, this is repeatable) is that sometimes when I wake the screen & log in to my host computer in the morning, most of the guest VMs don't seem to respond and show just a back screen. (Note that it doesn't happen all the time and is somewhat sporadic.) Here's a quick GIF screengrab to show what happens afterwards:

As you can see, only the first VM seems to respond to clicks, the rest appear dead. Note that if I try to send Ctrl+Alt+Del keyboard sequence to any of those "hung up" guest VMs nothing happens. The only way to recover from this bug is to force-quit the VMWare Workstation itself, or reboot the host PC, which are both analogous to me flipping the power switch on all guest VMs (with data being lost in them) which is very annoying!

So I'm curious if anyone knows a way to recover from this bug w/o force-quitting the VMs?

PS. I also checked online and there was an update v.10.0.7 build-2844087 to VMWare that I installed, which unfortunately didn't fix anything.

[chaithu4u]

I have noticed this behaviour in VMware 12 after creating a new Windows 7 VM and a Vista VM I put it into high performance mode disabled Hibernation, Sleep, Screensaver, Hard drive . I think all I really had to do was disable hibernation.

Not sure what OS you are running as a guest VM but here is the way to disable it in Windows 10

Hibernate - Enable or Disable in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Here is how to do it in Windows 8

Power Options Menu - Add or Remove Sleep or Hibernate in Windows 8

Here is how to do it in Windows 7

Hibernate - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Help Forums

Have you tried going into Services and restart all the ones for VMware(even if they say their on)

[RaviMV]

Not sure what OS you are running as a guest VM but here is the way to disable it in Windows 10

Disable the Sleep or Hibernate in windows 8

[gantzm]

I have experienced this behavior with a Windows 10 Guest running under Workstation 12  on a Linux host.

Disabling sleep and hibernate did not solve the problem.

Disabling "Accelerate 3D Graphics" was what solved the problem for me.

My Linux guests do not exhibit this behavior even with "Accelerate 3D Graphics" enabled.