"Power on after opening this virtual machine" missing in v6.5 of workstation

[baker_tony]

Hi, under virtual machine settings -> options there's no longer a check box for "Power on after opening this virtual machine".

Where did it go? How do I tell a VM to power on after opening?

Interesting enough, is that I had an earlier version of workstation that had that option which was set to true for a virtual machine that I opened in version 6.5 and it correctly powered on after openening.

[AWo]

Try this setting in the guests .vmx file: gui.powerOnAtStartup = "true"

[baker_tony]

I've done some experimenting and gui.powerOnAtStartup = "true" in the vmx file does cause the VM to power on after opening, but only for the FIRST VM that is opened. Subsequent VM's that open (and appear as another tab in the VMWare Workstation application) do NOT power on with gui.powerOnAtStartup = "true" in their vmx files.

Looks like a bug? Any setting to tell VMWare to open a new environment when a VM is opened rather than adding it as a tab (like earlier versions of VMWare)?

Thanks heaps for ya quick response!

Tony.

[RDPetruska]

Search this forum for a similar post from about a week ago. This is not a bug, but a design correction decision.

[baker_tony]

Hmm, I don't know how good the search engine is for this knowledge base, but searching for "Power on after opening this virtual machine" doesn't bring up any solutions (which is a reason I put that string in the subject of my posting).

I don't suppose you could supply the subject of the post with the solution?

Many thanks.

Tony.

[RDPetruska]

Here's the thread. Subject is slightly different, so that's probably why the search didn't find it.

[baker_tony]

Thank you for that. I can now see that I have to modify all my shortcuts in my startup folder to have:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware.exe" -x <path to my virtual machine.vmx file>

rather than just the shortcut to the vmx file itself, which worked in earlier versions of VMWare.

I do have to say that removing the tick box option to power on the virtual machine when opening is a step backwards (to me).

Also, choosing to power on the first VM you open if it has gui.powerOnAtStartup = "true" in its vmx file but ignoring the gui.powerOnAtStartup = "true" command in subsequent vmx files that are opened in VMWare is not intuitive and counter productive (to me at least).

Otherwise, great product!

[admin]

The gui.powerOnAtStartup = "true" option affects only VMs that you open via the command-line.

The confusing behavior is precisely why we removed it.