Workstation 16.x VM - Games don't run?

[Pixus]

Hello; I thought I'd make a post about this since I'm a bit perplexed by what's going on with this issue.

So I've recently updated my VMware Workstation Player to 16 and made a new virtual machine, mostly so I could play some old games utilizing DirectX 6 I have that don't work under normal circumstances, and for some reason, a handful of games I'm trying to run don't seem to be running on it. I find this odd since they seemed to work perfectly fine under 15.x VM versions so unless something went under the hood, I'm not sure what's going on or how to fix it.

If anybody has a guide or something on how to get past this issue, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[RaSystemlord]

Don't know, but you say that you created also a new VM. Do they run on the old one using Player 16.x? No Windows computer is exactly the same, no matter how you install it. (You can also always make copies and test on a copy, if you are concerned for making unwanted changes to the original).

As for the problem itself - what happens when it doesn't work? What is the Host and what is the Guest OS? If you have Windows 10, the actual version can make a big difference (version like 1909, 2004, or something else). What were the OS versions when it did work?

[Pixus]

From the last time I checked, I believe that they ran using a version 15.x VM on player 16.x.

I should have specified that the games outright don't launch when I try to run them; my bad. As for the versions, my current build for my host OS is 19042.867, while the guest OS were on Windows XP, 7, and 10 (haven't checked which version yet).

[RaSystemlord]

I'm not an expert in particular game launching problems that there might be - although I know that Windows 10 itself has many with state of the art games.

But for the actually problem status, perhaps for others to give you a better idea, could you verify these:

- initially, you say that upgrading VMware started the problems

- however, in the above you say that VM-computer upgrade started the problems. Can you verify which is it?

- are you really using Player or Workstation Pro? Pro gives you easy upgrade choices ... not sure why you would need to upgrade the VM-computer itself, you can run lower VM-computer versions with newer Player/Pro version in a rather flexible manner (if you don't need some of the new features).

- has your Windows 10 had a Feature Upgrade associated with the problem timing? This is well possible to cause problems, even security updates could do that. So, with your current Windows 10, does it work, in some case (not sure what case that might be, check the questions above)?

Anyway, I think any of these 3 matters (Win 10, software upgrade, VM computer upgrade) can cause a certain problem, but it would be good to limit the possibilities. In games, you probably use 3D acceleration in the VM and thus the problem may be because of combined problems (like new VM software version trying to access new Host graphics driver versions ... or something).

[Pixus]

My apologies for making it confusing; I'm not sure how to really word it.

So basically, a version 15.x virtual machine running on 16.x works fine, while a 16.x virtual machine doesn't seem to run games. I'll check more onto this.

I'm using Player, and I'm definitely considering updating to Pro at some point, but right now I'm sparingly using it so I can't really justify it at the moment.

I'm unsure if it had a feature upgrade or not, but it plays games just fine so I'm not sure what's going on.

I guess it could probably be relating to 3D acceleration, but I could be wrong.

[RaSystemlord]

Thanks for the clarifications and sorry that I cannot offer more on the point advice ... maybe somebody else?

From your description, I'm guessing that when running 16.x software you have a DIFFERENT Windows installation when using a 15.x or 16.x VM computer. Thus the real difference is the Windows installation and NOT VM-computer upgrade into 16.x version.

Given those possibilities:
- you don't need to Upgrade your VMs into 16.x VM-version, even if the software is 16.x. Especially this is true if everything works to your satisfaction on 15.x version
- as for a Windows computer = VM, well, you need what you need. That's more difficult to figure out if some KB-update has caused the problem. Anyway, it is a Windows problem. There is no Feature Upgrade Downgrade option - the wording is sometimes like this, but in reality, the way is a new install with NOT doing a new Feature Upgrade (there are settings for NOT doing that in Update Settings). Smaller Updates can be removed per KB number.

As for verifying, which is it, you can make copies from VMs for safe testing and figure out, which of the two possibilities it is. As for Downgrading VM-version of your VM-computer, I think a text editor would do the job. Better to use Google to verify - anyway a test is safe if you use copy-computers.

[Pixus]

You're welcome, and me just guessing that it not being able to run on 16.x is just speculation since I don't know most of the factors that are going into it, since for whatever reason, all the current Windows installations I have don't seem to run games.

I'm still trying to find a good solution to this, but I appreciate your comments!

[RaSystemlord]

Yes, I agree on your comments.

IF this is about VMware VM-computer version, you might want to change this, since this is a pretty simple and quick way. Here is one link how to do it. You may need to install Workstation Pro Evaluation version in order to do this (good for 30 days). The link is not exactly for your versions - but carry this out on backup computers for safety. (In Windows world, use robocopy to ensure that the copy to backup media is always 100%, never use file explorer because that cannot be trusted in important cases between misc medias or network. You need to have the pointer to a VM-computer OFF in VMware software when doing this - just remove that particular VM from Library if you want to have VMware software open).

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2128613

You are right that if your Windows computers, running Windows 10, 7 and XP all have this problem, it is unlikely that they would all had a similar update problem. While some Updates still arrive to unsupported versions, assuming that Windows is the problem is quite far-fetched, even if in theory possible.