Unable to open two workstation consoles with vm tabs

[khenry567]

Hey guys,

I installed WS on XP(32bit) with SP2 as host. I then installed a Vista vm, and 2 different XP vm's. All this on a D520 laptop, with dual core 1.6 and 4 gigs of RAM.

I want to see one of the XP vm's on my laptop monitor and the Vista on the lcd monitor connected to the laptop. The manual tells me to open two instances of WS console. When I open the second console it has no vm's. I am assuming from the manual that this is not the way it is supposed to appear.

I can open the Vista and one of the XP's at the same time OK. I can do extended monitor on both machines while both vm's are running also. I just can't see a way to open the Vista on one monitor and an XP on the other monitor.

[admin]

What do you mean by "it has no vm's"?

You can always use File > Open to open the second VM.

[asatoran]

I think the OP means that there are no tabs of the previously opened VMs at the top of the window in the 2nd instance of Workstation. This behavior has been previously observed, but I don't know if any one considers it a bug or flaw. The workaround is as stated, File, Open.

[khenry567]

Hey Juan, Yes, I mean it has no tabs in the second console window as astoran stated. I then clik File>Open as both of you

suggested and I get the message "This virtual machine appears to be in use. Then BLAH BLAH about vm in use, pressing cancel button to avoid damage, or if not in use press "Take Ownership", and it gives the correct path." If I clik on "Take Ownership" it does nothing except bring the "TO" button up again. The bottom line is I can't seem to open up a second window with vm tabs. My "off the cuff" guess is that this has something to do with my using a laptop and the way the display works on a laptop as opposed to the way it would work with two seperate display adaptors in a desktop. Am I correct?

Appreciate both of you taking up your time on this. Thanks.

[admin · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, we cannot have the same VM open in two different Workstation tabs. So, close the tab in the first Workstation window before opening it in the second one.

By the way, this is why the second Window starts with no open tabs.

[asatoran]

"Close" the tab from the first instance of Workstation before you open that particular VM in the second instance of Workstation. Closing the tab will remove the locks on the VM files. You can have tabs in each instance of Workstation, but not the same tabs in both instances at the same time. It does get confusing as to which tabs get "remembered" depending on the order in which you close the Workstation instances. The workaround I use is to put all the VMs in Favorites and close all the tabs. This is similar to the way Server1's client behaves.

BTW this behavior is not related to laptops. It happens on my desktop machines, both with single and multple video cards.

[khenry567]

Thanks for the reply and the correct answer also. I did not realize I had to close the tab in the first console window to get it to open in the second window. The manual was not clear on this. I will follow your tip on the "Favorites"

[khenry567]

Thanks for your reply and correct answer on this. I had to read this twice before it dawned on me. Like I told astoran, it is not clear in the manual. Appreciate your help with this.