Workstation 11- Vmware Workstation Server is not starting

[JonRutherford]

We performed an upgrade from workstation 10 to 11. after the upgrade the server component stopped working and we can not get it started again. We are running Workstation 11.1. We have uninstalled and reinstalled, we have rebooted multiple times. The event viewer states "The VMware Workstation server service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 5 times. Event Id 7031. I have also attached the hostd log file.  Any help would be appericated.

Thanks

[wila]

Hello,

Have you changed anything in regards to the parallel port on your host computer?

The reason I ask is that the in the log file the last part before the server component crashes is this:

2015-02-26T10:59:16.376-06:00 [09660 info 'Solo.EnvironmentManager'] Environments file: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\environments.xml
2015-02-26T10:59:16.406-06:00 [09660 info 'Libs'] HostDeviceInfo: Failed to enumerate host parallel ports via the registry. Could not open device map parallel port registry key.
2015-02-26T10:59:16.407-06:00 [09660 warning 'Solo.EnvironmentManager'] Failed to enumerate parallel devices
2015-02-26T10:59:16.436-06:00 [09660 info 'Default'] CoreDump: Writing minidump
2015-02-26T10:59:16.679-06:00 [09660 panic 'Default']

If you check in your windows device hardware is the parallels port listed? If so does it have a yellow checkmark next to it?

If you didn't change anything with regards to a parallel port on your host and you are not using it, then you might want to consider to disable it in the BIOS.

While certainly not perfect, it might at least enable you to get past the problem and use Workstation 11.

hope this helps,

--

Wil

[GMGallo]

HI, I have experienced a similar problem immediately after upgrading to 11. (11.1 didn't fix this either).  I have two (physical) machines with Windows 7/64 running Workstation. I have local and shared VMs on both. In version 10 I could connect from one to the other and and run its shared VMs. Once I upgraded both systems to 11 I couldn't connect to the other anymore. When I try to connect to the other server I get the following error (sharing is enabled in both):

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VMware Workstation

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Failed to connect to XL5640. XL5640 is an unknown server. VMware Workstation cannot connect to this server.

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Once I downgraded one of the machines back to 10 I could connect it again one way. In summary:

WORKSTATION 10 - Connects to WORKSTATION 11 - YES

WORKSTATION 11 - Connects to WORKSTATION 10 - NO

WORKSTATION 11 - Connects to WORKSTATION 11 - NO

So, the server part is working, but version 11 does not recognize other Workstation xx as server.

WORKAROUND

I downloaded ESXi 5.5 (vSphere Hypervirsor 5.5) which is free, prepared a dedicated machine and am in the process of migrating all my VMs there. So far I have no issues.

Workstation 11 connects to the ESXi server in a snap. Despite the intimidating installation guide, a fresh installation on a CPU with a clean disk is straight forward. You can tweak things afterwards with VSphere Client (also free)  form another machine in the network. To install ESXi just burn the ISO and boot from it. I got it running in minutes. Hypervisor is the OS running this machine and all your VMs run there as well. This is a more robust solution down the road if you can dedicate a piece of hardware to it.

TIP

Create your VMs with Workstation. You can create them directly in ESXi from Workstation. In ESXi you can also create VMs but they are not the same kind of animal. I couldn't get those ESXi VMs to connect to a CD to install the OS, the BIOS is kind of bare bones.

Hope this helps, and I hope VMware fix the various flaws reported in 11.