VM console is blank in VMware WS UI for those vm's which are automatically powered on during machine start

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about configuring the auto-start feature.

Symptoms:
Use the "Configure Auto Start VMs" option from the File menu of VMware Workstation Pro UI to select some virtual machines to start automatically during the machine start. Also, change the configuration of the VMware Autostart Service to the "automatic" start type with the appropriate user in the Logon information. Restart the host machine and observe the status of the virtual machines as powered on in Workstation Pro UI. Click on any of these virtual machine names in the left pan and observe that the virtual machine UI is not rendered.

Cause

Windows services and any subprocess launched by them run in session 0 (before any user logs in to session 1 or 2,3 etc). The Session 0 Isolation security implementation in Windows restricts any video rendering (ref: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/application-compatibility-session-0-isolation/ba-p/372361).
Since the process (vmware-vmx.exe) for powering on the VMs is started by the Windows system service "VMware Autostart Service", vmware-vmx.exe too runs in session 0 in this case and is unable to render the UI.

Resolution

NA

Workaround:

1.  An alternative way to connect and see the VM UI e.g. VNC viewer or Remote desktop.

              OR

2. Suspend the virtual machine and then resume from VMware Workstation Pro. The options to select in the UI are "Suspend this guest operating system" and "Resume this guest operating system".