Workstation 8 Unity option turns gray.
1. If you do not turn Unity on right away after launching the VM, and run some programs, it will become grayed out and you will NOT be able to turn it on.
2. If you do turn Unity on right away after launching the VM, and run some programs, it will become grayed out and you will NOT be able to turn it offf.
3. While this is going on, if you simply launch VMWare worstation and highlight a VM, it will say, "This virtual machine appears to be in use." and then there are the two buttons Take Ownership and Cancel.
4. When that happens, your only options under power are Power Off and Suspend. That does make it sound like Workstation can no longer communicate with VMWare tools, but the VM mouse and everything else work fine, so they HAVE to be working.
I see lots of threads of people chasing rabbits such as R&R VMware tools etc., but I haven't seen anything from other than short-lived excitement by people who have tried that.
Config:
Host: Windows Pro 7 64 patched to latest, Dell M6600, 2720QM, 8GB RAM, latest M8900 drivers from Dell site.
VM: XP Pro 32 SP3, 2 CPU, 3.3 GB virtual memory, 380 GB virtual drive.
Workstation 8: Shows no pending updates
Other:
So far I'm not overly impressed with Workstation 8. VMs run a ton better when they are not in Unity mode. I spend most of my time working with VSphere and had high hopes for the built in client. However, it won't be competing with the VSphere client any time soon. It has nowhere near the functionality and is at least 20 times slower. My opinion so far is the real justification for the upgrade is you need it to support the new hardware and operating systems.
