Will my VMware Player 6.0.7 virtual machine survive upgrade of PC from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 ?

[WayneM2]

I have read some discussion that Player 6.0.7 will run on a 32bit installation of Windows 10. That's a good start 🙂

I am currently running Player 6.0.7 on a 32bit Windows 8.1 PC. Player 6.0.7 lets me run some very important legacy apps from my old Win98 as a virtual machine.

What I want to know is this: If I take the plunge and do the Windows upgrade from 8.1 to 10 on my current PC, will I be able to just fire up Player 6.0.7 after the upgrade and it will work just as it did before?

Has anyone done this successfully?

*Some background: The reason I ask if this will work, is that I am concerned that after the OS upgrade, my PC system might be different enough that it will trigger some kind of Windows activation issue for the virtual machine OS.

More background and another question; I managed to get Windows 10 Preview running on an old netbook just to have a look at the OS. I also tried to open the .vmx file of my Win98 vm on the Netbook. It seemed like it was going to work and then it got stuck at the Windows activation. I guess this has something to due with the Netbook not having the same components/configuration/motherboard/etc as the PC on which the .vmx file was created. Q: Is there a way around this sort of issue?

[wila]

Hi,

I'm not sure if Player 6 will actually work well under Windows 10, I think it does not, but I suppose it might depend on your actual needs.

You should however have no problem running your guest in a newer version of Player (try Player 12) under Windows 10.

Changing the host OS itself will not be seen by the guest OS. So that part should not trigger any activation issues.

Moving your guest OS to another folder or another PC however can trigger the activation logic as it will see a different CPU.

Depending on the question "Did you copy or move" this can also add more virtual hardware changes.

FWIW always choose "Move" if you don't want any virtual hardware changes in the guest OS.

Make sure to have a copy of your important guest OS on an external harddisk before you upgrade anything so that you have something to go back to.

Shut down your guest OS before making that copy and never work directly with that copy (make a copy of the copy to use)

On the host itself you can use snapshots to make experimenting a bit easier, but beware that a snaphshot isn't a good backup.

There are a number of things you can do to keep the amount of changes to a minimum.

For example you can keep the old virtual hardware version.

--

Wil

[WayneM2]

Wil -

Thanks very much for all that information.

I will give it try with Player 12 and report back here with the result.

-Wayne