VMware Workstation Pro refuses to run more than 1 VM

[ik9000]

Anyone on here any good with VMware? I've got a workstation pro licence (started on 16.1 now on 16.2.1)

I used to be able to run VMs side by side. Worked nicely for several months. Each VM set to 8GB Ram in a system with 32GB. Suddenly, for no reason I can figure out, the software self-terminates a running VM as soon as I try and open a 2nd one. Anyone got any idea what might be causing this?

The only thing I can recall doing differently was running a machine in Unity mode, which I never used to do. Turning that off hasn't resolved the issue.

Some people say it's Nvidia driver related but I've not changed the driver from day 1 of having VMware (still on 457.51 confirmed by the Nvidia control panel) and win10 is not set to update drivers.

I guess it's possible a win update has done something but I'm still on 2004 19041.1415 (waiting for my AV to expire before doing a new build) so I haven't crossed a milestone threshold for that to suddenly cause this.

Help, this is driving me mad. I really need to be able to have two VM side by side. That was the whole point in buying the pro licence.

The error then seems to persist and starts making even 1VM jittery/crash until I terminate a few of the VM processes in task manager and restart the VM software from cold. Talk about Fubar.

[smargh]

16.2.3 fixes copy-paste issues after a recent Windows update, so you need to be on that anyway.

Ideally also check that you have the Windows Hypervisor Platform feature added. start->run->optionalfeatures

After both the above, re-test and see if the issue is still there.

If no success, disable A/V briefly just to rule that out.

Workstation does also create some logs, maybe those contain something of interest.

[ik9000]

thanks will shift this deadline then have a delve into those. Very much appreciated.

When you say disable A/V what do you mean? In the VM settings or system?

Edit: sry you mean antivirus. My head was in audio-visual world so I was assuming you meant display/sound settings.

[GuruNot]

you should find a vmware.log file in each of your vm directories, is there anything in the vmware.log file of the terminated vm that would suggest a reason.

I have been running Workstation Pro for many years and never come across this problem, I am currently on 16.2.3.

Also you mentioned you allocated 8GB RAM to each VM in a host with 32GB, how many vCPU's to each guest and how many cores in the host ?