VMware Communities
CaptJohn6
Contributor
Contributor

upgrade Workstation player virtual machine

I have a virtual machine that was made with Player 10 and now I am running Player 14.  How can I upgrade the virtual machine?

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
diegodco31
Leadership
Leadership

Hi

Step to step:

Change the Hardware Compatibility of a Virtual Machine

Remember: Make backup the vmdk

If this answer has helped you, please mark it as answered.

pastedImage_1.png

Diego Oliveira
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcodiego
Reply
0 Kudos
CaptJohn6
Contributor
Contributor

I am using VMware Workstation Player (the free version).  This does not have the option to upgrade the VM.  I was hoping there was a standalone product that would do the conversion.

Reply
0 Kudos
bluefirestorm
Champion
Champion

What you could as an alternative is create a new VM in VMware Player 14 and choose the "Install operating system later" option. You then replace the virtual disk of the new VM with the existing one.

Keep a backup of the VM though before doing this. If the existing VM uses virtual EFI, you may have to copy over the nvram file over as well aside from the virtual disk. The nvram file of a virtual BIOS is much smaller (around 9KB) than one using virtual EFI (over 70KB).

Reply
0 Kudos
diegodco31
Leadership
Leadership

There is actually no function in VMware Player to do that.

  • Any VMware product in the chart above, with the exception of VMware Player, is able to upgrade the version of a virtual machine's hardware to the highest version that it supports.

VMware Knowledge Base

It may be as simple as manually editing the .VMX file for the virtual machine.

Power off the VM, do not just suspend it.

Navigate to the folder containing the VM

Make a copy of the existing .VMX file

If possible, make a copy of the entire VM... just in case.

Open Notepad and then drag the original VMX into Notepad's window.

In VMware Player, open the virtual machine's .vmx file using a text editor.

Locate the entry virtualHW.version = "x".

Change the above entry to:

virtualHW.version = "14"

Save and close the .vmx file.

Save the file, then double-click on the .VMX to open it.

If a WIndows VM then you should get prompted about changed hardware

Install the newer VMware tools to get newer drivers, etc.

  1. Note: Changes made to the .vmx file do not take effect until the next time VMware Workstation or VMware Player is opened.
Diego Oliveira
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcodiego
Reply
0 Kudos
maren_vm
Contributor
Contributor

Hi, I am using the free VM Player Version 12, on which I have installed Windows 2000 + Office 2000 and some legacy accounting software. I use all of these all the time. If I upgrade my player version, will I lose all the software installed on it?

Reply
0 Kudos