Shared VM feature is removed in VMware Workstation 16.2.0

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to inform you about this change.

Symptoms:
No option to run shared VMs in VMware Workstation.

Environment

VMware Workstation Pro 16.2.1 (Windows)
VMware Workstation Pro 16.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation Pro 16.2.1 (Linux)
VMware Workstation Pro 16.x (Linux)

Cause

The captioned functionality has been removed from the product due to business requirements.

Resolution

There is no workaround to get this feature. The advice to you who are upgrading VMware Workstation from earlier versions to Workstation 16.2.0 is to move the Shared VM's to the local user's account before starting the upgrade.