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 12.5.1 is a free upgrade for all VMware Workstation 12 Pro users. It contains bug fixes, 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

Using multiple monitors does not work on Ubuntu 16.10 virtual machines
When using multiple monitors with an Ubuntu 16.10 virtual machine, you may see a black screen or all the displays on one monitor. This issue can occur when you cycle through three or more monitors. The issue can occur when you are using VMware Tools or open-vm-tools.

Workaround: Reboot the virtul machine and cycle through the monitors again.

Virtual machines running Linux kernel version 4.7 or above may crash or hang on hosts with Intel CPUs
Virtual Machines running Linux kernel version 4.7 or above may crash during installation or during power-on with a crash in the intel_powerclamp driver. This issue has been reported with Ubuntu 16.10, but it is a generic Linux kernel issue.

Workaround: VMware is working with the OS vendors to have them fix their respective kernels. Until a fix is available, you can blacklist the intel_powerclamp driver so that the buggy code doesn't get loaded.

To blacklist the driver:

Add the kernel command-line option modprobe.blacklist=intel_powerclamp to the guest OS's default grub configuration or add it directly at the grub menu during boot.

VMware Tools service is not started in Ubuntu 16.10 guest
After installing VMware Tools in an Ubuntu 16.10 guest, the VMware Tools service is not started. As a result, functionality provided by the VMware Tools service, for example, shared folders, is not available.

Workaround: In the guest operating system, manually start the VMware Tools service.

Log in to the guest machine and enter the following command: sudo systemctl start vmware-tools.service.

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.

Workaround: Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers and delete hcmon.sys, vmci.sys, vmx86.sys, and vmkbd.sys.

Resolved Issues

Bridged networking not working
If you delete VMnet8 and VMnet1 in the Virtual Network Editor, then bridged networking is no longer available after the host is restarted. This issue could appear after upgrading to Workstation 12.5.

This issue is resolved.

vmrun commands fail on RHEL 6.8 and CentOS 6.8 hosts
Trying to execute vmrun commands on a RHEL 6.8 or CentOS 6.8 host machine, results in errors.

This issue is resolved.

hostd server does not start on RHEL 6.8 host
If you install Workstation 12.5 on a RHEL 6.8 host machine, vmware-hostd cannot start. As a result, shared virtual machines are not available.

This issue is resolved.

A virtual machine using EFI firmware sometimes crashes when it is powering on
When powering on a virtual machine that uses EFI firmware instead of BIOS, the virtual machine sometimes crashes witha 0xc0000374 (Heap Corruption) exception.

This issue is resolved.

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:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vmci\device:
vmciver.dll

This issue is resolved.