Workstation 15.5.6 blue-screened during install. Now my VMs won't start.

[MrChristian]

My VMware Workstation 15.5.5 automatically downloaded and started installing 15.5.6. Something in that process caused the Windows 10 host to blue-screen. Now when I attempt to launch any of my VMs, they fail to start with the error:

Unable to open kernel device '\\.\VMCIDev\VMX': Overlapped I/O operation is in progress. Did you reboot after installing VMware Workstation?

Module 'DevicePowerOn' power on failed.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

My virtual machines are a mixture of Windows 7, Windows 10 and Linux.

I manually downloaded the 15.5.6 installer and ran that. It completed without issue. I still have the above problem. I read that you can set vmci0.present = "FALSE". I did that on one of the VMs, and it not starts and appears to be working normally.

Will I lose any functionality by making that change to all of my vmx files? I hate to do that because I have several virtual machines.

Should I uninstall VMware Workstation completely and re-install it?

[Mits2020]

In 2008 continuum​ said Re: Is vmci0.present = "TRUE" needed on a VM that has no vmware tools installed?

Test thoroughly in only one guest and if you detect any functionality loss you may attempt a second guest etc.

Uninstalling any program in a loaded host (having many programs installed) may fail. So if you want to try from scratch, better completely uninstall your Workstation using Add/Remove Programs, reboot, and then install version 15.5.6

[MrChristian · Accepted solution]

I ended up doing a manual uninstall and full re-install, and that fixed my problem. The automatic uninstall didn't uninstall enough. It left almost everything installed.