What's in the Release Notes

About VMware Workstation Pro
What's New
Prior Releases
Known Issues
Resolved 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 virtual machine resides on a personal PC or on a private enterprise cloud.

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

What's New

VMware Workstation 12 Pro version 12.5 is a free upgrade for all VMware Workstation 12 Pro users, it adds support for the following operating systems:

Windows 10 Anniversary Update
Windows Server 2016

VMware Workstation 12 Pro Version 12.5 also contains bug fixing, security updates and performance improvements.

Prior Releases

Features and Known Issues from prior releases of VMware Workstation Pro are described in the release notes for each release. To view release notes for prior releases of VMware Workstation 12 Pro, click the following links:

Known Issues

Some driver files are not deleted after uninstalling VMware Workstation from a Windows host operating system
After VMware Workstation is uninstalled, the following driver-related files remain on the Windows host operating system:
In C:\Windows\System32\drivers:
hcmon.sys
vmci.sys
vmx86.sys
vmkbd.sys in case Enhanced Keyboard Driver was installed.
In C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vmci\device:
vmciver.dll

Workaround: Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers and delete hcmon.sys, vmci.sys, vmx86.sys, and vmkbd.sys. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vmci\device and delete vmciver.dll.
When VMs on the same host connect to the same NAT network, they cannot communicate through a global IPv6 address
When you use NAT network with IPv6 enabled and connect VMs that reside on the same host to that NAT network, the VMs cannot communicate with each other through their global IPv6 address.

Workaround: None
Sometimes the easy install prompt never disappears even after the VM completes installation
When you install a guest OS by using the Easy Install option, after easy install completes, Easy install is installing *** might still appear at the bottom of the VM console. In this case, easy install completes successfully, you can confirm this as VMTools already completes installation during easy install.

Workaround: Restart the virtual machine.

An error message "There was a problem updating a software component." prompts when you install VMware Tools manually on Fedora 24 host
When you install VMware Tools for guest OS on Fedora 24 hosts by clicking VM > Install VMware Tools... menu, an error message There was a problem updating a software component might appear. This is because Fedora 24 ships with a new library libncursesw.so.6.0 which currently is not built into VMware Workstation.

Workaround: Shutdown the guest OS, quit VMware Workstation, then manually install the library through the following command from a terminal:

sudo dnf install ncurses-compat-libs

After the installation completes, launch VMware Workstation, power on the guest OS, and you will be able to manually install VMware Tools by clicking VM > Install VMware Tool menu.

Resolved Issues

VMware Workstation Pro cannot launch on Linux host with kernel 4.6
A Linux host with kernel 4.6 fails to launch Workstation because the vmmon and vmnet drivers are not built successfully.

This issue is resolved.

The VM reverts back to a snapshot when suspending
If you configure Revert to snapshot when a VM is powered off from Options-> Snapshots, the VM actually reverts to a snapshot when suspended.

This issue is resolved.

On Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview host, help links do not appear
With the latest Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, this issue no longer exists.
This issue is resolved.

Unable to install VMware Tools in FreeBSD 10.3 guest OS
Due to changes in the FreeBSD system-bundled Perl, you cannot install VMware Tools in a FreeBSD 10.3 guest OS and you get a vmware-install.real.pl: not found error when executing the ./vmware-install.pl script.

This issue is resolved.

USB autoconnect VMX entry is getting removed when the USB device is disconnected from the VM
The issue occurs after you add a VMX entry to autoconnect the USB device to a VM by using VID and PID. This entry is getting removed when you disconnect the USB device from VM through VM > Removable device > Disconnect.

This issue is resolved.

Workstation fails to launch on RHEL 6.8 host with kernel 2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64
On RHEL 6.8 host with kernel 2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64, Workstation fails to launch due to vmnet driver compilation error.
This issue is resolved.

Wireless adapter cannot connect after Workstation is installed
Beginning with Windows 8, Microsoft implement a security policy (GPO) that prevents non-domain and domain simultaneous connections. When this GPO is enabled and Workstation is installed, Windows considers the virtual adapters that Workstation creates as physical connections. Therefore, the wireless connection cannot be established because Windows prefers the wired connection (virtual adapter) to wifi connections.
This issue is resolved.

Workstation menu View->Fit Guest Now does not work for Windows Vista guest with VMware Tools installed
When you power on a Windows Vista guest with latest VMware Tools installed, and click Workstation menu View->Fit Guest Now, the guest screen does not change.
This issue is resolved.

Unable to launch Workstation on Fedora 23 host
After installing Workstation on a host running Fedora 23, Workstation fails to launch.

This issue is resolved.

Sometimes canceling Workstation installation deletes all the contents in the destination folder
When installing Workstation to a customized folder path, canceling the installation deletes all the contents in the destination folder.
This issue is resolved.

You hit a VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (svga) when running 3D application in the guest
If your Windows host has an NVDIA GPU, you might hit the VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (svga) when running a 3D application in the guest.

This issue is resolved.

VMware Workstation Pro cannot boot virtual machine on a 64-bit Braswell N3150 processor.
VMware Workstation Pro cannot boot virtual machine on a 64-bit Braswell N3150 processor and the following error appears:

MONITOR PANIC: vcpu-0:VERIFY vmcore/vmm/main/cpuid.c:376 bugNr=1036521.
This issue is resolved.

Some types of smart card are not accessible in the guest on a Linux host
On a Linux host, when you try to connect smart card to guest via Workstation through VM->Removable Devices, the guest can detect the smart card reader, but is not able to access the smart card.
This issue is resolved.

On the Ubuntu 15.10 and later versions guest operating system, replacing open-vm-tools with the bundled VMware Tools version, might cause VMware Tools to work improperly
On the Ubuntu 15.10 and later versions guest OS, when you replace open-vm-tools with the VMware Tools version bundled with VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Tools does not work as expected. After you reboot the system, an Ubuntu crash report might appear and one of the services in VMware Tools might stop working.

This issue is resolved.

The amount of memory used by the guest OS cannot be limited
The guest OS uses the full amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine even if you try to limit the amount of memory used by the guest OS through the BCDEdit 'truncatememory' option.

This issue is resolved.

USB Ethernet adapter fails to connect to the VM
You cannot connect specific USB Ethernet adapter to a running VM.
This issue is resolved.