Hyper-V, Credential Guard, Device Guard, or why doesn’t VMware Workstation or VirtualBox work on Windows 10?

It’s frustrating if you’re seeing the the message from VMware Workstation about Device Guard or Credential Guard or the similar one from VirtualBox.

But, there are a few thing to clarify before going off on a search for those devices.  First, if you’ve got Hyper-V installed, that is the most likely culprit here and disabling or removing that feature should solve your issue.

Some things to consider:

If you’ve got Windows 10 Home, then you don’t have Hyper-V enabled. See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/reference/hyper-v-requirements

If you have Windows 10 Home or Pro you do not have Credential Guard enabled.  It is a feature only in Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise versions of Windows 10. See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/identity-protection/credential-guard/credential-guard-requirements

 

This is great info, but what do you do about getting Workstation or VirtualBox to work?

Again, the most likely culprit is Hyper-V.  Disabling or removing and a reboot should resolve this.

Disable or Remove Hyper-V

Disable Hyper-V

Open an elevated command prompt or PowerShell (right-click and select Run as Administrator)

Enter: bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Reboot.  (To re-enable Hyper-V, open an elevated prompt and enter:  bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto and reboot.)

Remove Hyper-V

Go to Control Panel–>Programs and Features, select Turn Windows features on or off.

Expand Hyper-V, then expand Hyper-V Platform.

Uncheck Hyper-V Hypervisor.

Reboot.  Please note that removing Hyper-V could affect the functionality of other features of Windows 10 such as Docker.

 

Windows Hypervisor Platform

While this is supposed to allow 3rd party virtualization to access the hardware virtualization on the host, it doesn’t seem to work for either Workstation or VirtualBox.  Workstation  gives the same standard Credential Guard message.  VirtualBox is supposed to work per their changelog, but the communities have posts reporting failure and a bug report on it.

Disable Windows Hypervisor Platform

Go to Control Panel–>Programs and Features, select Turn Windows features on or off.

Uncheck Windows Hypervisor Platform

Reboot.

 

Disable Device Guard

Editing the Registry will disable this feature.  Please make sure you have a backup of your system, as editing the Registry can result in an unusable or broken Windows.

Edit the following key:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceGuard\Scenarios\HypervisorEnforcedCodeIntegrity

Set:  Name = “Enabled”  Type =dword  Data = 0

Reboot.

Alternately, you can use the Local Group Policy Editor to manage Device Guard.

Start gpedit.msc or find Local Security Policy from the start menu.

Expand Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Device Guard and change the state to disabled.  If you see the same settings as below, you probably don’t have Device Guard enabled.

 

Credential Guard

Credential Guard is controlled via Group Policy, so it’s likely that if this is the issue, you’ll be unable to do anything about it yourself.  You’ll need to contact your IT department to have this turned off.  Again, Credential Guard is only available on Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise.  If you don’t have one of these versions, this isn’t the culprit.

 

Antivirus Utilities

There is one more culprit that could be causing the issue.  Some antivirus software blocks hardware virtualization.

Check with your antivirus vendor to confirm this isn’t an issue and if there is a way to disable it on your AV software.

 

Due to the various builds of Windows 10, you might not find these settings in exactly the same place as described or shown.

 

More info:  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3204980/virtualization-applications-do-not-work-together-with-hyper-v-device-g

 

Update: I’ve added a new post here:

https://smudj.wordpress.com/2023/10/02/why-is-there-a-hypervisor-enabled/

Another culprit that uses a hypervisor is Core Isolation.  Check the link above for more details, but if you’ve enabled Core Isolation, then you’ve got a hypervisor running.

To disable: Settings>Privacy & Security>Windows security>Device Security>Core Isolation

Slide to OFF.

 

Setting Up an All-in-One Windows AD Test Environment (VMware Workstation Edition)

Build a basic all-in-one lab in VMware Workstation. This how-to shows you how to build a virtual Windows Active Directory environment isolated from your home or work network. This is a follow-up to my same procedure in VirtualBox:  https://smudj.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/setting-up-an-all-in-one-windows-ad-test-environment-virtualbox-edition/. 

Note: I’m no AD expert, there are better, worse, and different ways to do this and you’re not required to use VMware Workstation.

Requirements:
16GB RAM minimum
SSD or multiple HDDs
Quad-core or better CPU with hardware virtualization enabled

1. Download the necessary software. Download the ISO for the OSes you’ll be installing. For this example, I’ll be using IPFire and the MSDN versions of Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 Pro.
   1. VMware Workstation Pro: https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-pro.html
   2. Windows OS Evaluation: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/
   3. IPFire: https://www.ipfire.org/download/ipfire-2.21-core124
2. Create a folder for your test environment. 
   1. In Workstation, right-click My Computer and click New Folder.  Enter a name like “Allin1 AD” and press Enter.  Click your new folder to select it.
3. Create an internal network.
   1. Click Edit–>Virtual Network Editor.
   2. Click Change Settings, click Yes at the UAC prompt.
   3. Click Add Network, select a network.  For this example, we’ll use VMnet15.  Click OK.
      1. Under VMnet Information, verify that Host-only is selected.
      2. Uncheck Connect a host virtual adapter to this network.  *This will prevent your physical host from accessing the test environment.
      3. Uncheck Use local DHCP service to distribute IP address to VMs. *We will use the Windows server’s DHCP and DNS for this environment.
      4. Change the subnet address to 192.168.15.0 **Any IP subnet can be used here.  To prevent confusion, use a unique IP range.  10.0.15.0, 10.15.0.0, 172.16.0.0 and 172.16.15.0 are all alternative options. Choose an appropriate subnet.   For the labs purposes, a 255.255.255.0 subnet is acceptable.  Click Apply. 
      5. Verify your settings for VMnet15 and click OK.
      6. 
4. Create your IPFire Router VM
   1. Click File–>New Virtual Machine or CTRL+N.
   2. Select Custom and click Next to begin the New Virtual Machine Wizard.
   3. Click Next, the default hardware compatibility is fine.
   4. Select Installer disc image file (iso) and click Browse.  Go to the location from step 1.3 where the IPFire ISO is located.
      1. Select the ISO and click Open.  
      2. Click Next. 
   5. Select Linux as the guest OS and click Next.  *IPFire is built from scratch and not based on any Linux distro.
   6. Enter IPFire for the VM’s name.  Select the appropriate location for your VM.  For this document, the name is ipfire-wpdoc and the location is C:\VMs\ipfire-wpdoc
   7. Click Next.
   8. One processor is enough for our IPFire router, click Next.
   9. 512MB is the minimum requirement for IPFire.  Click 512MB and click Next. (https://wiki.ipfire.org/hardware/requirements)
   10. Network type.  Select host-only networking and click Next.
   11. Click Next to select the default I/O controller type.
   12. Click Next to select the default disk type.
   13. Click Next to create a new virtual disk.
   14. Change the disk size to 4GB and click Next. *2GB is the minimum, 4GB is recommended for logs and add-ons. See 4.9 above. 
   15. Click Next to accept the default disk file name and location.
   16. Click Customize Hardware.
       1. Click Add…, 
       2. Click Network Adapter.  
       3. Click Finish.
          1. The new network adapter, network adapter 2, will be selected.  Select NAT or Bridged for the network connection. **NAT will provide a more isolated environment, where bridged will allow the IPFire VM an IP address on your host’s network.  NAT will be used for this document.
          2. Click Advanced. Click Generate under MAC Address.  Make note of this address.  We will need the address when assigning network types in the IPFire installation.  Click OK.
       4. Click Close.
   17. Click Finish.
   18. Click Edit Virtual Machine Settings
       1. Click Network Adapter
       2. Click Custom, select VMnet15, click OK.
   19. Drag the IPFire VM into the folder created in 2.1 above. 
5. Install IPFire
   
   1. Click Power on this virtual machine.
   2. Click the IPFire splash screen and press Enter.  
   3. Press Enter to accept the default language selection.
   4. Press Enter to Start Installation. 
   5. Press Tab, press the spacebar to select I accept this license.  Press Tab again and press Enter.
   6. Press Enter to Delete all data.  
   7. Press Enter to accept the default file system.
   8. Press Enter to reboot.
6. Configure IPFIre
   1. Press Enter to select the default keyboard layout.
   2. Change the timezone.  For this document PST8PDT will be used.  Press Enter.
   3. Press Enter twice to accept the default hostname
   4. Press Enter twice to accept the default domain
   5. Root password.  Enter a password and press Enter twice. Press Enter to continue. 
   6. Enter a password and press Enter twice.  *this is for the admin password, it can be the same for simplicity. 
   7. Press Enter to continue. 
   8. Use the arrow key to move down to Drivers and card assignments, press Enter.
      
      1. Green — This is our internal test environment network.  It will have no direct access to the Internet or the host’s network.
         1. Press Enter to select
         2. Compare the MAC addresses and use the one that was not generated in step 4.16.3.2.
         3. Use the arrow keys to select the correct interface and press Enter.  To move between fields, use the Tab key.
      2. Red — this will allow the test environment external access via the NAT network.
         1. Use the arrow key to select Red and press Enter.
         2. There should only be one interface left to select.  Press Enter. 
   9. Both network cards should now be assigned.  Use Tab to move to Done and press Enter.
   10. 
   11. Tab to Address Settings and press Enter.
       
       1. Press Enter to reconfigure the Green interface.
       2. Press Enter to acknowledge the warning.  We are not connected remotely, so this does not apply.
       3. Since we are using the 192.168.15.0 subnet, we will assign a 192.168.15.1 IP address to the Green interface as it will be our gateway IP address.  The default subnet mask does not need to be changed.  Press Enter three times to accept the IP, subnet, and return to Address Settings.
       4. Use the arrow key to select Red.  Press Enter.
       5. The Red interface will get an IP address from Workstation’s NAT.  Using the arrow keys and spacebar, select DHCP.  Use Tab to move to OK and press Enter.
       6. Use Tab to move to Done and press Enter. 
   12. DNS and Gateway settings are only needed if using a static IP. Since we are using DHCP, there is nothing to change here. Tab to Done and press Enter.
   13. We will be using Windows DHCP so we do not need to enable IPFire’s DHCP server.  Tab to OK and press Enter.
   14. Setup is complete.  Press Enter.
   15. Login with root and verify that you can ping an external IP address like 4.2.2.2 or 8.8.8.8.  Press CTRL+C to break the ping.  If unable to ping, verify the network configuration is correct above.
7. Create a Windows Server 2016 VM.
   1. Press CTRL+N, select Custom, click Next.
   2. Click Next, the default hardware compatibility is fine.
   3. Select Installer disc image file (iso) and click Browse.  Go to the location from step 1.2 where the Windows Server ISO is located.
      1. Select the ISO and click Open.  
      2. Click Next. 
   4. Click Next to skip the Easy Install Information. Click Yes to accept the product key prompt.
   5. Enter a VM name and location.  For this document, the name is W2016DC1 and D:\VMs\Virtual Machines\W2016DC1
   6. Click Next to select the default BIOS.
   7. Select One Processor and Two Cores. Click Next.
   8. Set RAM to 4096MB. If you have more than 16GB of RAM, you can increase to 6 or 8GB, if needed. Click Next.
   9. Select use host-only networking and click Next.
   10. Click Next to select the default I/O controller type.
   11. Click Next to select the default disk type.
   12. Click Next to create a new virtual disk.
   13. Change the Maximum disk size to 80.0 GB.  Click Next 
   14. Click Next to accept the default disk file name and location.
   15. Click Finish.
   16. Click Exit virtual machine settings.
       1. Click Network Adapter.
       2. Select Custom, VMnet15, and click OK
8. Install Windows 2016
   1. Install Windows as you normally would.
9. Configure Windows Server and Domain
   1. Enter the IP information. The IP needs to be on the same subnet as configured for the GREEN network. EX: 192.168.15.200, GW: 192.168.15.1, DNS: 127.0.0.1 since we’ll be creating a domain controller with DNS and DHCP services. *Remember to use the IP address entered in step 6.11.3 for the gateway address.
   2. You should be able to ping an IP address like 192.168.1.15 and 4.2.2.2, but not a DNS name.
   3. Change the name of your server and reboot.
   4. Start the Add Roles and Feature Wizard
      1. Add the following roles:
      –Active Directory Domain Services
      –DHCP Services
      –DNS Services
      2. Follow the wizard’s steps.
      3. Promote: Add a new forest.
      4. Enter your domain name and follow the wizard.  –you will get a warning about DNS, this will be resolved later.
   5. Configure DNS and DHCP
      1. DNS.  We need to add a forwarder for our DNS settings.
         1. From Administrative Tools, open DNS
         2. Right-click on your server and click Properties.
         3. Click the Forwarders tab
         4. Click Edit, and add your external DNS servers like 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 8.8.8.8, and 8.8.4.4.
      2. DHCP
         1. Double-click DHCP from Administrative Tools
         2. Expand IPv4 and right-click, click New Scope from the menu.
         3. Enter an IP range, ex: 192.168.211.50 to 192.168.211.100
         4. The remaining settings can be default for now.
         5. When asked to configure scop options, verify “Yes” and click Next.
         6. Router/Default gateway will be the IP we used to configure the GREEN NIC, ex: 192.168.15.1
         7. Domain name and DNS should be pre-configured. You should see the server’s IP in IP address box, ex: 192.168.15.200
         8. WINS does not need to be configured at this time.
         9. When prompted to activate scope, verify “Yes” and click Next.
         10. Click Finish to complete the wizard.
         11. Right-click on the server’s name under DHCP, and click Authorize from the menu. Refresh and IPv4 should have a green circle with a white check mark
   6. More details for setting up an DC in Windows 2016 can be found here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/canitpro/2017/02/22/step-by-step-setting-up-active-directory-in-windows-server-2016/
10.  Managing IPFire via web interface
    1. IPFire can be accessed via web browser.  Enter Enter https://ipfire_ip-address:444, in this document it will be https://192.168.15.1:444
    2. You will get a certificate error when accessing the IPFire management page.
11. Adding Client VMs
    1. Add your Windows Client OSes.  Install Windows as usual, make sure to set your VM’s network to the custom VMnet15.
12. Completion! 

Here’s the all-in-one pic!

• VMware Workstation
• IPFire
• Windows 2016 DC via RDP
• Windows 10 

 

VMware Workstation 12.5 now available

What’s New

• Support for Windows 10 Anniversary Update
• Support for Windows Server 2016

Also included are bug fixes, security updates, and performance improvements.

Full Release Notes here: http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation.html

Download: http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation.html

 

3Ware 9650SE with ESXi 5.5

This is definitely an edge case, but if you’ve got a bunch of old 3Ware 9650SE RAID cards laying around, they will work in ESXi 5.5.  You’ll need to either create a custom ISO or add them via SSH after the install.  Adding them post-install is easier for me than making another custom ISO.

I’ve set up 2 ESXi servers (old x58 chipset MBs I had laying around) to do some clustering.  I picked up 5 9650SE RAID cards off of eBay for $55, including cables, and cobbled together some RAID volumes from the stacks of HDDs I had laying around.

I set up my ESXi boxes with a custom ISO I’d created previously that has the Realtec NIC, Intel NIC, and Intel SATA drivers (that’s another post, or look up ESXi-customizer). I was able to get the cards up and working with minimal issues (after I updated the firmware to the most current version…was a puzzle as a couple cards were updated and just worked, then I got stuck with some others and they wouldn’t work at all until the FW was updated)

I then replaced one of the ESXi boxes with an x79 system and could not get the RAID card to work with the existing drivers I had.  Hours and multiple reboots, driver uploads, I found another driver that works from Avago (direct): http://docs.avagotech.com/docs/12349232

You can find it here: http://www.avagotech.com/ –> Support –> Support Documents and Downloads –> Legacy RAID controllers –> 3ware 9650SE-xxxx –> Search –> Driver –> VMware ESXi 5.0 Update 1 for 9650SE/9690SA

Connect to your ESXi server via SSH (you’ll need to enable this first) and use the command:

localcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/datastore-name/scsi-3w-9xxx-2.27.08.036-1OEM.500.0.0.472560.x86_64.vib

VMware Workstation 12 released 26Aug2015

A little late, I know!

Also, VMware Workstation Player (formerly known as Player Pro) – See more

Player, Workstation, and Workstation Player Comparison

VMware Workstation 12 Pro Release Notes

VMware Workstation 12 Pro | 24 AUG 2015 | Build 2985596 Last updated: 26 AUG 2015 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What’s in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

• About VMware Workstation Pro
• What’s New
• Known Issues

About VMware Workstation Pro

VMware Workstation Pro enables technical professionals to develop, test, demonstrate, and deploy software by running multiple x86-based Windows, Linux, and other operating systems simultaneously on the same PC.

You can replicate server, desktop, and tablet environments in a virtual machine and allocate multiple processor cores, gigabytes of main memory and graphics memory to each virtual machine, whether the VM resides on a personal PC or on a private enterprise cloud.

For more information, see the broader VMware Workstation documentation or specifically the VMware Workstation 12 Pro Documentation Center.

What’s New

The following support is new in Workstation 12 Pro:

• Full support of Windows 10
  VMware Workstation Pro provides the following support for Windows 10:
  • Run Windows 10 as a virtual machine
  • Run Windows 10 as a host operating system
  • Windows 10 Auto Detect and Easy Install
  • Unity support for Windows 10
  • Migrate Windows 10 PC to a virtual machine
• New guest operating systems support
  Support has been added for the following operating systems:
  • Ubuntu 15.04
  • Fedora 22
  • CentOS 7.1
  • RHEL 7.1
  • Oracle Linux 7.1
  • VMware Project Photon
• Advanced graphics
  Support has been added for the following standards:
  • DirectX 10
  • OpenGL 3.3
• Performance improvements for suspending and resuming encrypted virtual machines
• Improved vCloud Air Integration (Workstation Pro on Windows only)
  • Power operation on remote virtual machines
  • Enhanced user experience
• Support IPv6 NAT network
• Tear away tabs
  You can drag open tabs out of the Workstation Pro window into new or already existing Workstation Pro windows.
• Automatically suspend virtual machines upon host shutdown
• Support 4K monitors with high resolution UI
• Support for multiple monitors with different DPI settings
• Echo cancellation for voice and video calls with Microsoft Lync and Skype
• Added USB 3.0 support to Windows 7 virtual machines (with the latest Intel USB driver)
• Improved standard installer
• Added NAT network configuration in Virtual Network Editor on Linux hosts
• Respect left-handed mouse setting on Windows host

The following features have reached end of life in Workstation 12 Pro and have been removed:

• Unity mode on Linux guest and host operating systems
• Integrated Virtual Debugger Visual Studio
• Connection to the VMware vCloud Air subscription service (The VMware vCloud Air OnDemand service is still fully supported)

VMware Workstation 10.1 release

VMware Workstation 10.1 update released

Release Notes

VMware Workstation 10.0.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues. It is a free update for all VMware Workstation 10 users.

Resolved Issues

The following issues are resolved in this release of VMware Workstation.

• Easy Install supports RTM versions of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
  Easy Install now supports RTM versions of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
• Workstation or Player on Windows freezes if another application is frozen.
  Other stuck Windows applications could cause Workstation or Player to freeze while waiting for the application to respond.
• Virtual machine hangs when powering off
  Rarely, virtual machines will cease functioning (hang) while powering off, particularly if the guest OS was in the middle of a BSOD or kernel panic.
• Improved compatibility with some AMD CPUs
  Updated masking to match capabilities of certain AMD PileDriver CPUs.
• Virtual machines displayed incorrectly on a multi-monitor Windows host when the displays have differing pixel density (DPI.)
• Boot from CD/DVD when Legacy Floppy is disabled

VMware Workstation 10 Released

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws10/doc/workstation-10-release-notes.html

What’s New

VMware Workstation 10 delivers best-in-class Windows 8 support, and innovative new features that transform the way technical professionals work with virtual machines, whether they reside on their PCs or on private enterprise clouds.

• New Operating System Support
  Support has been added for:
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 8.1 Enterprise
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Ubuntu 13.10
  • As well as for the latest Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat and OpenSUSE releases. 
  • VMware Hardware Version 10
    This version of VMware Workstation includes VMware hardware Version 10 and is compatible with vSphere 5.5. Hardware versions introduce new virtual hardware functionality and new features while enabling VMware to run legacy operating systems in our virtual machines. New features included in this hardware version:
    • 16 vCPUs
      Virtual machines can now run with up to 16 virtual CPUs. This enables very processor intensive applications to be run in a virtual machine.

      Note: Running virtual machines with 16 vCPUs requires that both your host and guest operating system support 16 logical processors. Your physical machine must have at least 8 cores with hyper-threading enabled to power on a virtual machine with this configuration.

    • 8 Terabyte Disks
      Virtual machines can now include virtual disks greater than 2 Terabytes. Given the limitations of most operating systems to boot from disks greater than 2 Terabytes, These large disks are most useful as secondary drives for file storage.

      Note: To use a disk greater than 2TB for a boot disk, your guest operating system would need to boot using EFI in order to read a GPT formatted disk which is required to access all of the sectors on a disk of this size. Additionally, the Buslogic controller is not capable of supporting a disk greater than 2TB.

    • Virtual SATA Disk Controller
      A SATA I/O controller can now be selected during the creation of a custom virtual machine in addition to an IDE and SCSI controller. This enables use of in-box SATA drivers that are shipped with operation systems.
    • USB Improvements
      USB 3 Streams have been implemented to enable high speed transfer of files from USB 3 external storage devices that support this technology. For customers running Workstation 10 on laptops with small hard disks, large data files, video files etc., can be stored on an external USB 3 storage device and accessed quickly from within the virtual machine.

      VMware has also addressed issues Intel, NEC, AMD, TI and Linux Kernel host xHCI drivers to improve overall USB 3 compatibility and performance.

    • More VMnets
      Due to demand, VMware has doubled the number of VMnets in Workstation 10 to twenty! This provides you with more virtual networks to dedicate to specific uses, and it enables more complex networked virtual environments to be built.
    • SSD Pass-through
      Windows 8 is capable of detecting when it is being run from a solid state drive (SSD) and optimizes itself for this hardware. In Workstation 10, the guest operating system will be able to detect when the virtual machine Disk file is being stored on an SSD drive and the operating system can make the same optimizations when it is running in a virtual machine.

    Many additional changes have been made to this Hardware Version including some performance improvements, power savings, and compatibility with new processors. We have also made significant improvements in the startup time of VMware Workstation and in Windows boot time when running Windows virtual machines.

  • Expiring Virtual Machines
    VMware has enhanced the capabilities of Restricted Virtual Machines to include the ability to expire a virtual machine on a specified date and time. This feature enables our customers to create virtual machines to be shared with employees, students, customers, contractors, etc. The restricted virtual machine will run until their contract terminates, demo runs out, or course ends.

    The expiring capability establishes a secure connection to a web server to validate the current date and time and prevent users from rolling back their system clock to circumvent the logic. The ability to set the synchronization frequency has been added to allow customers to balance the need for timely expiration and the load on their network. Expiring virtual machines also include the ability to display a custom message for virtual machines about to expire and after a virtual machine has expired. Finally, a lease period can be defined to allow users to run offline for plane trips and remote work.

  • Virtual Tablet Sensors
    Workstation runs very well on the new tablet and convertible PCs. Last year VMware enabled touch screen input to be passed through to the virtual machine. Workstation 10 introduces a virtual Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass and Ambient Light sensor.

    Customers who run Workstation 10 on a Windows 8 tablet and install Windows 8 in a VM, will be able to shake, twirl, tilt, and spin their tablet and sensor aware applications running in a virtual machine will respond accordingly.

  • User Interface Enhancements
    There are many user interface improvements that we have included in the Workstation 10 release. The highlights include:
    • Windows 8 Unity Mode Support
      We are continuing to improve how the Workstation Unity user-interface works with Microsoft’s “Modern UI” or the “Microsoft Design Language” (The new tile interface in Windows 8 formerly known as Metro). Microsoft Store applications are now available in the Unity menu and can be launched directly from it.
    • Multiple Monitor Navigation
      When running with 2, 3, 4 or more monitors it has been frustrating to use the full screen mode in Workstation and toggle through each combination of monitors to get to the one you want. The full screen toolbar now has an option to choose your configuration from a menu and jump to it immediately.
    • Power Off Suspended Virtual Machines
      Workstation 10 lets you simply power off a suspended Virtual Machine in order to make changes to the configuration without powering it on and then off first. Powering off a suspended virtual machine will lose any information stored in memory, but will not lose anything saved to the virtual disk.
    • Remote Hardware Upgrade
      When working with virtual machines running remotely on vSphere or on another instance of Workstation, you can now remotely upgrade the virtual hardware version.
    • Localized into Simplified Chinese
      The Workstation user interface and online help has been translated into Simplified Chinese.
  • New Converter
    This release includes the latest version of the VMware Standalone Converter. The Converter enables users to turn a physical machine into a virtual machine. This version of the Converter includes the ability to convert machines running Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and RHEL 6 operating systems. It supports virtual and physical machines with Unified Extensible Firmware Interfaces (UEFI) and EXT4 file systems as well as GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks.
  • OVFTool
    The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) is a virtual machine distribution format that supports sharing virtual machines between products and organizations. The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility that enables a user to import and export OVF packages to and from a wide variety of VMware products. The latest release of the OVFTool is included with VMware Workstation 10 and is used to upload and download virtual machines to and from vSphere. The OVFTool is also used to import an .OVF file which may come in handy when importing virtual machines created using desktop virtualization software developed by Oracle.
  • VMRun Enhancements
    The VMRun command line utility has been enhanced with two new options getGuestIPAddress and checkToolsState to retrieve the IP address of the guest operating system and determine the state of VMware Tools in a guest.
  • Cloud Management Tools
    The VMware Workstation team has been making enhancements and working with partners to enable cloud management tools to be used with virtual machines running in VMware Workstation 10.
    • We would like to thank Mitchell Hashimoto at Vagrant for his development of the Vagrant VMware Provider. See http://www.vagrantup.com/vmware for more information.
    • VMware would also like to thank Christian Hammond for the development of a Chef knife plug-in for VMware Workstation. See https://github.com/chipx86/knife-wsfusion for more information.
  • Embedded 30-day Trial
    Workstation 10 can now be evaluated for 30-days by simply entering your email address the first time you run the application. This change is intended to make it much easier for our customers to learn about the latest release of VMware Workstation without their license keys being trapped by spam filters.
  • VMware KVM
    Many of our customers have asked for a way to run a virtual machine so that their users do not realize they are running in a virtual machine. VMware Workstation 10 includes a new executable (on Windows only for now) called VMware KVM. Run vmware-kvm.exe vmx-file.vmx from the command line and your virtual machine will launch in full screen with no toolbar or any other indicator that you are running a VM. You can use Ctrl-Alt to ungrab from the virtual machine and the Pause/Break key to toggle between multiple virtual machines running under VMware KVM, or between a virtual machine and the host system. The user experience should be just like that of using a KVM switch – hence the name.

    If you simply type vmware-kvm.exe from the command line you will get some options that can be used in this format: vmware-kvm.exe [OPTIONS] vmx-file.vmx. If you runvmware-kvm.exe --preferences you will presented with an interface that allows you to configure certain behaviors such as the key used to cycle between virtual machines.

    This is the latest generation of an executable previously called VMware-fullscreen.exe that previously shipped with Workstation 8 with a major upgrade in display handling.

  • WSX 1.1
    https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/wsx.

VMware Player is now “free for personal use”

No more free ride for commercial/business users.

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

What does it cost?

VMware Player is free for personal non-commercial use.

 

Can I run restricted virtual machines created by VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion in VMware Player?

Yes, if you purchase a VMware Fusion Professional license to enable this features in VMware Player.

 

(Quick and Dirty) Managing Hyper-V Server 2012 from Windows 8

Update:  HVRemote is now updated and supported for Win8.x and 2012, 2012 R2.

This is what I did to get this working for a Windows 8 computer on a domain and a Hyper-V Server in a workgroup on a separate subnet.  In this case, Hyper-V Server 2012 (HVS2012) is running in a VM on Workstation 8 on the Windows 8 machine and using the “host only” VMware network.  This assumes you’ve installed and are at the “Server Configuration” window.

Note: I’ve found that seems to help is the use the same username and password that you’re using on the Win8 computer for the HVS2012 server.

1. Select “7” to enable remote desktop, “E” to enable, “2” allow clients running any version
2. From the cmd prompt: “netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off”
3. Set a static IP address on your local network
4. Add an entry with the static IP from 3 above with the name of your HVS2012 server in your Win8 hosts file ( c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts )
   1. In my case, the entry was 172.16.1.12  hvs2012-2
5. Verify you can ping the Hyper-V server via name from Win8
6. Download hvremote from http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/HVRemote and put a copy on both Win8 and HVS2012, from Win8’s start screen type “\\hvs2012-2\c$“
7. Run the command’s from John’s 10-second guide for client-domain, server-workgroup
   

   	Server	Create a local account (eg “john”)	Use net user /? or Computer Management (this is already done from installation, so we can skip it)
   	Server	Grant the user access	cscript hvremote.wsf /add:accountname           ***use the account you created, preferably one that matches username and password to your domain joined Win8 client(You’ll get warnings/errors about running an unknown OS and the firewall not being active, we can ignore them for now)
   	Client	Allow Anonymous Logon remote DCOM access	cscript hvremote.wsf /anondcom:grant(you need to open a cmd prompt “as administrator”)(you’ll get the warning again about the unknown OS, again ignore)
   	Client	Set credentials for local account	cmdkey /add:servername /user:servername\accountname /pass(replace servername with the HVS2012 server’s name and account name with the one we created above (again, matching your Win8’s if possible)

8. On Win8, start Hyper-V Manager and click “Connect to Server…”
9. Enter the name of the HVS2012 server and it should resolve and you should see this:
10. 

At some point, you should get a prompt from the Windows firewall about allowing traffic through for this.

For more options for server management, get the RSAT for Windows 8 here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28972  (there are still some issues with RSAT, like connectivity to Device Manager, Disk Management, remote PowerShell.)  When I’ve added my HVS2012 server to Server Manager I get a “Kerberos authentication error” but am able to open Users, Groups, Services, etc without issue from Computer Management.  Remote Desktop works also.  I’ve ran “winrm qc” on HVS2012 but it doesn’t seem to help.

I’m no Kerberos or Powershell guru so I’m open to any steps to move beyond this.

Since I created my install drive at 8GB, I added a 2nd disk for VMs.  See this page: https://smudj.wordpress.com/hyper-v-serverpowershell-info/

Note: when you set up a Virtual Network with only one NIC you’ll get an RPC error message in the Hyper-V Manager, if you close it out and restart it, you’ll likely need to re-add it to see it again.

End result: Windows 7 VM running on a HVS2012VM on VMware Workstation on Windows 8 with HVS2012 managed by the same Windows 8

Hyper-V as a vSphere VM/Nested x64 OSes on VMWare ESXi/Workstation 8

I’ve been playing around with the new vSphere 5 Hypervisor (ESXi5) lately and I came across a few cool tricks from virtuallyghetto (http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-support-for-nested-64bit.html):  running x64 VMs on ESXi5 while itself is a VM under Workstation 8 and running VMs under Hyper-V server under ESXi.

Running a Hyper-V VM while Hyper-V is itself a VM under ESXi5 does work, it’s not really something you’d want to do, unless you’re masochistic.  I was able to get Windows 2000 Pro running walking as a VM successfully.  The stability of ESXi seems to be greatly affected by doing this also, since my ESXi host hung at some point overnight.