cstocci's Posts

Folks, Another odd behavior to the misidentifying the hard drive with an SSD, with the newly created Guest Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 O/S, I noticed I have lost the ability to disconnect/connect external I/O devices (like my RDX USB 3.0 port) as those options are greyed out. I wonder if there is a bug in the newest update of VMware Workstation Pro as I never had any of these issues with previous versions installing different Linux distros, Windows 7, 8 and 10 different versions too.  Now, very few things work much anymore without a lot of "gotchas." Anybody else having these issues and if they were, how did you get around these issues and/or what did you learn that mitigated these problems? Thanks! Chris

Hi Tramp20,  I found the solution (at least for me) as it worked).  Please go to the following site for the latest MS VC Redistributals: and download and install the following two files: 1. vc_redist.x86.exe 2. vc_redist,x64.exe Then retry to install the full install version of 16.2.0 and it should go smooth after that. Chris

Hi Tramp20, VMware should really just allow thew option of upgrading with an MSI format.  It always works fine.  I have tried to communicate with tech support, but no responses yet. Other than one of us finding some kind of "trick," we are probably stuck at whatever version we currently have. Chris

Hi, I disabled my antivirus and firewall programs to see if they were causing some kind of interference, but same issues as I stated earlier.  The only reason I was able to upgrade on previous versions was during the "full-install" approach, the executable created an *.msi and another file in the temp directory.  When that happened, I grabbed the *.msi and ran that file and it has always worked perfectly ever since version 15.  I learned this technique from another VMware Workstation Pro user having the same issue I was having with the updater. What is really weird with this update is the builtin updater in the main application seems to think I am running some version of Windows below 8, like version 7 or something.  It is completely lost on my Windows 10 Pro system. I am hoping either they simply put out an Windows installer version, i.e., an msi version sooner than later to circumvent this issue. Chris

Folks, After both the Workstation Pro upgrade to 15.5.5 and the MS Windows 10 version 2004 (the May 2020 update), things are very fast now.  Windows 7 Pro, Windows 10 LTSC 2019 and other operating systems are are now up and running in about 15 seconds.  HUGE improvement, in fact, this issue as far as I am concerned, is now gone! Chris

Hi MITS 2020, Thank you as that did work!  My thought still stands as to why should anybody have to go through this effort to implement a small upgrade?  I agree with you, either use a simple downloadable program to "sniff" if the correct MS Visual C++ files are present and , if not, go get them before installing the main or upgraded version. Thanks again! Chris

Hi, Forgot to mention that I currently have VMWare Workstation Pro version 15.5.2 build-15785246 working great!  So I am not jumping across many versions.  Version 15.5.2 to 15.5.5 should only be a minor upgrade and not be causing these kind of upgrade errors/problems that several users are already experiencing. I think the issue is probably caused by the major Windows 10 upgrade gong to version 2004 which just happened a few days ago.  If this is a fact, then many VMWare Workstation Pro users are going to get the same issue as several of us have already expressed as Microsoft distributes the upgrade in stages as they have indicated about 1 week ago. If anybody has the same experiences, I would like to hear about it so we could compare notes.  BTW, the upgrade failure suggests that we are suppose to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 version 14.3 Redistributables which, unfortunately according to Microsoft, does not exist, so this is a dead end to the "fix." Chris

Hi Preetam, I wish the only issue was a "black" screen for 5 to 30 seconds, but then operate normally.  That would be OK in my book.  As for what community is talking about the very slow boot time for Windows 10 1809, see the following VMware community site (March 7, 2019): Windows10-1809 boot time takes 5-6 minutes There are other in other times and some have even described this slow boot-up in later versions including 1909 (November 2019).  I wanted to try and use Windows 10 Enterprise 2019 LTSC as a way to NOT have to deal with Microsoft's productivity "improvements" to their operating system. I have your Workstation Pro 15.5.1 build-15018445 product running three VMs with two Windows 7 Pro (64-bit) and one Linux MINT and all are fast and work great and never have any issues at all!  The host system in Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) version 1909 (19H1) running on a dual Xeon CPU Supermicro X11DAC motherboard with 192 Gbytes of DDR4 RAM.  This Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC (1809) guest should not be tying up 100% CPU utilization for 5-6 minutes at each startup on my host machine.  BTW, I gave the VM 2 CPUs and 4 cores for each CPU along with 32 Gbytes of memory to run.  Plenty of memory and horsepower! Chris

Hi Preetam. I read about the snapshots, but I do not have any, nor do I ever use that option.  This extreme sluggishness is something to do between Windows 10 1809 and even up to 1909 from what I read, and Workstation Pro 14.xx and beyond. Another article I have read, and I will get the citation and send it along to the forum, is Microsoft is deliberately causing this issue as they are not happy about people having multiple Windows OS's running on one machine without paying for them, so they are creating issues for any VM whether VMware or Virtual Box.  Microsoft is also thinking of implementing their own VM engine (used for their own developers as well as a SAS item like Office 365) and this goes along with some of their ideas on acquiring and interactive capability with Linux (another small competition.) BTW, that information was from an "insider" that regularly beta tests different aspects of the Microsoft apps and OS. Chris

Folks, I would not defragment your SSD.  Your SSD manufacturer should take precedence over VMware on this question.  As you know, the SSD does not suffer the slowdown of a sequential read on a hard drive.  VMware needs to make explicit exactly how to handle this now more common than ever reality on SSDs as they are now the predominant mass storage devices on computers these days. Technically, VMware should allow defragging, but in a TRIM fashion and should explicitly say so in their application once the app has detected an SSD.  User should not have to make these decisions which could be incorrect and cause some serious problems. Companies have actually sued software utility application companies when they do not either inhibit or state what to do with their application when it comes to computer systems and hardware.  This is no different than mislabeling or no labeling any product which due to the lack of labeling causes user damage!! Chris

Folks, Been all over the web. It appears that the latest patch from Microsoft (KB4056892) has caused tremendous issues for all users, not just the AMD CPU users. Most Intel CPU users are having issues from BSOD, to no bootability at all. Most had to either reinstall W10 or restore to an earlier version (from a backup they hopefully had). Consequently, many user forums are telling all users of W10 (and W7, W8 and W8.1 users too) to hold off any updates related to this CPU flaw issue and to change the W10 update in the advanced options to as great a delay as possible which is 35 days or until MS finally makes some kind of updated patch for the mess that has been created by issuing this patch way too fast without sufficient regression testing. Please post this to your users even though some may have got it to work, many and I mean many are being put out BIG time with this patch! Chris

Thanks AriesScorpio! I was a bit hesitant about being the first at the party.  If I was just "playing around" on a 30 day trial, I would just go for it, but I do have apps that I need and use daily...cannot afford to be getting into a Ph.D. thesis right now.  Of course, I use Macrium Reflect and could just reimage the drive and bring myself back to workstation 12.5.7 in about 10 minutes. CT