Thanks @sueii !

Your consideration how some component can become available after Restart and not necessarily after Shutdown, is very valid. I just recently had that with an older workstation with the network adapter. However, that was with physical computer, were electronics are in play.

The thing that why VMware inherits similar behavior, is hard to imagine. Or is the matter about how Windows starts VMware-specific drivers? I have no internal information on that issue, but there was once a discussion that some of that perhaps takes place in RAM. Are you perhaps on the edge of sufficient RAM allocation within the VM (or running out of memory on the physical computer)? That might explain delays in loading drivers. Still, I have no theory on why behavior is different in Restart than in Shutdown.