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VMware Player Changelog

What's new in VMware Player 15.5.1

Nov 13, 2019
  • Workstation 15.5.1 Player addresses an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the e1000e virtual network adapter. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5541 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2019-0021.
  • Workstation 15.5.1 Player addresses an information disclosure vulnerability in vmnetdhcp. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5540 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2019-0021.
  • Workstation 15.5.1 Player addresses a denial-of-service vulnerability in the RPC handler. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5542 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2019-0021.
  • Workstation 15.5.1 Player resolves TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA), a speculative-execution vulnerability identified by CVE-2019-11135. For more information, see section 3b in VMSA-2019-0020.
  • Workstation 15.5.1 Player resolves a regression introduced in Workstation 15.5.0 Player which causes the Hypervisor-Specific mitigations for for L1TF and MDS vulnerabilities to be ineffective. For more information on these mitigations, please see section 3a in VMSA-2019-0008.

New in VMware Player 15.5.0 (Sep 27, 2019)

  • What's New:
  • Support for new guest operating systems:
  • Windows 10 19b
  • Debian 10.0/10.1
  • Debian 9.11
  • Oracle Linux 8.0
  • SLE 15 SP1
  • FreeBSD 12.0
  • PhotonOS 3.0
  • Jumbo frame support: Virtual networks can now be configured with MTU sizes of up to 9000 bytes.
  • Open VM Tools is the default VMware Tools for applicable Linux virtual machine.
  • Important Fixes:
  • Workstation 15.5 Player addresses the use-after-free and denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the following IDs to these issues...
  • CVE-2019-5527 (use-after-free )
  • CVE-2019-5535 (denial-of-service)
  • Implemented DLL loading security improvements, suggested by Peleg Hadar of Safebreach.

New in VMware Player 15.1.0 (May 15, 2019)

  • Support for new guest operating systems:
  • Windows 10 19H1
  • Ubuntu 19.04
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0
  • Fedora 30
  • ESXi 6.7 Update 2
  • This release of VMware Workstation Player addresses the following issues:
  • VMware Workstation 15.1 Player supports Hypervisor-Specific Mitigations and Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Mitigations for Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) vulnerabilities identified by CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, CVE-2018-12130 and CVE-2019-11091. For more information, see VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2019-0008.
  • VMware Workstation 15.1 Player addresses a DLL hijacking issue. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5526 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2019-0007.

New in VMware Player 15.0.4 (Mar 31, 2019)

  • VMware Workstation Player contains an out-of-bounds read/write vulnerability and a Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability in the virtual USB UHCI (Universal Host Controller Interface). These issues may allow a guest to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifiers CVE-2019-5518 (out-of-bounds read/write) and CVE-2019-5519 (TOCTOU) to these issues. See VMSA-2019-0005 for further information.

New in VMware Player 15.0.3 (Mar 19, 2019)

  • VMware Workstation Player contained elevation of privilege vulnerabilities:
  • Workstation Player does not handle paths appropriately. This may allow the path to the VMX executable, on a Windows host, to be hijacked by a non-administrator leading to elevation of privilege. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5511 to this issue. See VMSA-2019-0002 for further information.
  • COM classes are not handled appropriately. This may allow hijacking of COM classes used by the VMX process, on a Windows host, leading to elevation of privilege. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5512 to this issue. See VMSA-2019-0002 for further information.
  • Updated OpenSSL library version to 1.0.2q.
  • Updated libxml2 library version to 2.9.9.

New in VMware Player 15.0.2 (Nov 23, 2018)

  • Support has been added for the following host operating systems:
  • Windows 10, version 1809
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Support has been added for the following guest operating systems:
  • Windows 10, version 1809
  • Windows Server, version 1809
  • Windows Server 2019
  • This release of VMware Workstation Pro addresses the following issue:
  • VMware Workstation Pro contains an integer overflow vulnerability in the virtual network devices which may allow a guest to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2018-6983 to this issue. See VMSA-2018-0030 for further information.

New in VMware Player 15.0.1 (Nov 12, 2018)

  • Support added for the following operating systems as both host and guest:
  • Ubuntu 18.10
  • Fedora 29
  • RHEL 7.6
  • This release of VMware Workstation Player addresses the following issue:
  • VMware Workstation Player has an uninitialized stack memory usage vulnerability in the vmxnet3 virtual network adapter that might allow a guest to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2018-6981 to this issue.

New in VMware Player 15.0.0 (Sep 26, 2018)

  • New Guest operating systems support:
  • Windows 10 1803
  • Ubuntu 18.04
  • Fedora 28
  • RHEL 7.5
  • CentOS 7.5
  • Debian 9.5
  • OpenSuse Leap 15.0
  • FreeBSD 11.2
  • ESXi 6.7
  • DirectX 10.1:
  • DirectX 10.1 is an incremental update over DirectX 10.0. It provides higher visual quality through the support of multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA). DirectX 10.1 also supports Shader Model 4.1 and Cubemap Array.
  • Hardware version 16:
  • DirectX 10.1 support
  • Graphics memory up to 3GB
  • REST API:
  • You can use Workstation RESTful API to automate common virtual machine tasks using standard JSON over HTTP or HTTPS. The following virtual machine operations are supported:
  • Virtual machine inventory management
  • Virtual machine power management
  • Networking management
  • VCSA 6.7 support:
  • With Workstation 15 Player, you can import and run VCSA 6.7 (vCenter Server Appliance) in VMware Workstation 15 Player.
  • USB Auto connect to virtual machine:
  • USB devices can automatically connect to a powered on virtual machine when you configure Workstation 15 Pro to remember the connection rule. This is a Windows host only feature.
  • High DPI support:
  • High DPI related features require that the operating system of the host and virtual machine be Windows 10 version 1703 or later.
  • Host level high DPI support - The Workstation interface auto detects the host level DPI change and auto adjusts the layout to meet the new DPI.
  • Guest DPI synch with host - When there is a DPI change on the host side, the guest operating system adjusts its DPI to match the host DPI. VMware Tools 10.3.2 is required for this feature.
  • Known Issues:
  • On a Linux host, when the setting that records file and application usage is disabled, opening a virtual machine with VMware Workstation Player does not succeed.
  • For example, on Ubuntu 18.04, the setting is Settings > Privacy > Usage & History. For an older version of Ubuntu, such as 16.04, the setting is System Settings > Security & Privacy > File and Applications.
  • Workaround: Enable the setting that records file and application usage.

New in VMware Player 14.1.3 (Aug 15, 2018)

  • Security:
  • Updated VMware Workstation 14 Player Version 14.1.3 to use OpenSSL library version openssl-1.0.2o.
  • Addressed critical security issues as outlined in KB 55636

New in VMware Player 14.1.2 (May 23, 2018)

  • Windows 10 2018 Spring Creators Update (Version 1803) as host and guest
  • Ubuntu 18.04 support as host and guest

New in VMware Player 14.1 (Dec 30, 2017)

  • What's New:
  • This release delivers improved guest support of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Version 1709)
  • Includes VMware Tools 10.2.0
  • Resolved Issues:
  • VMware Workstation Player does not automatically detect the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Version 1709) ISO when creating a new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update virtual machine
  • A Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Version 1709) virtual machine might display a black screen after you exit Unity or multimonitor mode with multiple displays connected. This issue is resolved with VMware Tools 10.2.0 installed on the virtual machine.
  • During the launch process on an openSUSE Leap 42.2 host, Workstation Player issues a warning and an error message while compiling the vmnet virtual network, and the launch fails.
  • When a USB network adapter is connected to a virtual machine that contains more than one vCPU, the user, might experience connectivity issues with the network, such as slow or unstable network transfers.

New in VMware Player 14.0 (Oct 25, 2017)

  • Windows 10 Creators Update support:
  • Run Windows 10 Creators Update as a virtual machine
  • Run Windows 10 Creators Update as a host operating system
  • Windows 10 Creators Update Auto Detect and Easy Install
  • Unity support for Windows 10
  • New Guest operating systems support:
  • Ubuntu 17.04
  • Fedora 26
  • CentOS 7.4
  • RHEL 7.4
  • Debian 9.1
  • Oracle Linux 7.4
  • SLE 12 SP3
  • OpenSUSE 42.3
  • New CPU enablement
  • Intel Skylake and AMD Ryzen CPU support is enabled.
  • Virtual NVMe support:
  • Workstation 14 Player introduces a new virtual NVMe storage controller. NVMe devices require virtual hardware version 13 / ESXi 6.5 compatibility and later.
  • Secure Boot:
  • Workstation 14 Player introduces Secure Boot support for Virtual Machines to ensure only trusted code is loaded by the UEFI firmware prior to the OS "handoff" process.
  • Network Latency simulation:
  • With new Network Latency Simulation feature, you can simulate a specific network environment along with existing network speed and packet loss simulator.
  • Native OVF support:
  • With improved OVF/OVA support, Workstation Player provides an effortless walkthrough to deploy the VMware VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance) OVA package for testing and experimentation within Workstation. VCSA6.0 and 6.5 are supported.
  • New GTK+ 3 based UI for Linux:
  • Linux Workstation Player UI has been rewritten to support GTK+ 3.

New in VMware Player 12.5.7 (Jun 24, 2017)

  • This release of VMware Player is a free upgrade for all VMware Player 12 users. This release includes some bug fixes and security updates.

New in VMware Player 12.5.6 (May 20, 2017)

  • End users can create virtual machines with the Windows 10 Creators Update or by installing VMware Workstation 12 Pro on a Windows 10 Creators Update operating system.
  • Bug fixes and security updates.

New in VMware Player 12.5.5 (Mar 29, 2017)

  • This release of VMware Workstation Player addresses the following issues:
  • VMware Workstation Player has a heap buffer overflow and uninitialized stack memory usage in SVGA. These issues might allow a guest virtual machine to execute code on the host.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifiers CVE-2017-4902 (heap issue) and CVE-2017-4903 (stack issue) to these issues.
  • The VMware Workstation Player XHCI driver has uninitialized memory usage. This issue might allow a guest virtual machine to execute code on the host.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2017-4904 to this issue.
  • VMware Workstation Player has uninitialized memory usage. This issue might lead to an information leak.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2017-4905 to this issue.
  • Resolved Issues:
  • After you install VMware Tools on a 64-bit Windows virtual machine, when the virtual machine boots up, the system might display the following error:
  • VMware Tools unrecoverable error: (vthread-4)
  • Exception 0xc0000005 (access violation) has occurred.
  • This issue is resolved.

New in VMware Player 12.5.3 (Mar 10, 2017)

  • Resolved Issues:
  • When you attempt to pass through a USB device that does not follow USB specifications, such as the Broadcom 5880 smart card reader, to a Windows 7 or Windows 10 guest operating system, the device causes the guest CPU usage to increase to the maximum level, making the guest unusable.
  • When you connect a USB device to a virtual machine, read from and write to the device, safely eject the device from the guest operating system, and unplug the device from the physical port, Workstation Player might crash.
  • When users use a Windows XP guest with VMware Tools 10.0.10, they cannot see host printers that are mapped to the guest with ThinPrint technology.
  • This issue is resolved with VMware Tools 10.0.12 when you perform a clean installation. Upgrading from VMware Tools 10.0.10 to 10.0.12 does not resolve the issue.
  • When Workstation Pro users select VM > Removable Devices to connect an Active Braille device to the virtual machine, the attempt fails and a "driver error" message appears in the message log. Also, the guest operating system shows no record of the device.
  • The vmnat.exe process consumes a new TCP port on the host when users execute Active FTP on the guest. The process does not release the TCP port even when the FTP session is closed.
  • When you attempt to map a parallel port to a physical parallel port, you cannot use the parallel port in the virtual machine. The connecting parallel port listed when you select VM > Settings triggers the following error: Cannot open VMparport drivr for LPT1: the system cannot find the file specified.

New in VMware Player 12.5.2 (Nov 14, 2016)

  • Resolved Issues:
  • When you install the VMware VIX API files, some files install to C:, even when you select the default install path of C:Program Files (x86)VMwareVMware VIX.
  • Trying to execute vmrun commands on a RHEL 6.8 or CentOS 6.8 host machine, results in errors.
  • After VMware Workstation Player is uninstalled, the following driver-related files remain on the Windows host operating system: vmciver.dll.
  • Known Issues:
  • 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.
  • After VMware Workstation Player is uninstalled, the following driver-related files remain on the Windows host operating system in C:WindowsSystem32drivers:
  • hcmon.sys
  • vmci.sys
  • vmx86.sys
  • vmkbd.sys in case Enhanced Keyboard Driver was installed.
  • Workaround: Manually delete hcmon.sys, vmci.sys, vmx86.sys, and vmkbd.sys.

New in VMware Player 12.5 (Sep 20, 2016)

  • What's New
  • This release of VMware Workstation Player is a free upgrade for all VMware Workstation 12 Player users, it adds support for the following operating systems:
  • Windows 10 Anniversary Update
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Resolved Issues:
  • On a Linux host, when you click the close button on VMware Workstation Player window while the guest OS is shutting down, a question dialog appears. You wait until the guest OS is completely powered off, then you close the question dialog. The VMware Workstation Player window does not close.
  • 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.
  • After installing Workstation Player on a host running Fedora 23, Workstation Player fails to launch.
  • You cannot connect specific USB Ethernet adapter to a running VM.
  • On Surface Pro, you connect the Camera to the VM and it works correctly. When you disconnect the Camera from the VM, VMware Workstation Player throws Runtime error messages and stops working.
  • Sometimes the guest OS resolution is incorrect when it changes from small to large in Workstation Player.
  • VMware Workstation Player cannot boot virtual machines on a 64-bit Braswell N3150 processor and the following error occurs:
  • MONITOR PANIC: vcpu-0:VERIFY vmcore/vmm/main/cpuid.c:376 bugNr=1036521
  • 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 Player, 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.

New in VMware Player 12.1 (Dec 10, 2015)

  • Resolved Issues:
  • When creating a new virtual machine, if you select a Windows 10 version 1511 ISO file in the New Virtual Machine Wizard, the wizard says "Windows 10 detected. The operating system will use Easy Install". But in the next step, the "Version of Windows to install" dialog box only displays options for Windows Server 2012 R2.
  • When you run Microsoft Excel 2013 on a Windows 10 virtual machine, the application responds to your input with a one-second delay.
  • When you issue the vmrun command with the nogui option on VMware Workstation 12 Player, the command fails
  • When a UAS device is connected to a guest operating system and you turn the device off and back on, the device does not successfully reconnect to the guest. In Workstation Pro when you select VM > Removable Devices, the device is listed as connected to the guest, but the device does not appear in Windows Explorer within the guest.

New in VMware Player 12.0.1 (Nov 1, 2015)

  • After installing VMware Tools version 10.0.0 on a FreeBSD 10.x virtual machine, the guest might not shut down properly when performed from the VMware Workstation Pro interface
  • Virtual machines fail to start on a host with an Intel Skylake processor

New in VMware Player 12.0 (Aug 25, 2015)

  • Support of Windows 10:
  • VMware Workstation Player provides the following support for Windows 10
  • Run Windows 10 as a virtual machine
  • Run Windows 10 as a host operating system
  • Other new operating systems support:
  • Support has been added for the following operating systems
  • Ubuntu 15.04
  • Fedora 22
  • CentOS 7.1
  • RHEL 7.1
  • Oracle Linux 7.1
  • VMware Project Photon
  • Advanced graphics:
  • DirectX 10
  • OpenGL 3.3
  • Performance improvements for suspending and resuming encrypted virtual machines
  • Support for 4K monitors with high resolution UI
  • Support for multiple monitors with different DPI settings
  • Echo cancellation for voice and video calls with Microsoft Lync and Skype
  • Added USB 3.0 support to Windows 7 virtual machines (with the latest Intel USB driver)
  • Improved standard installer
  • Respect left-handed mouse setting on Windows host

New in VMware Player 7.1.2 (Jun 17, 2015)

  • Using audio conferencing software on a Windows 8 guest operating system caused a severe echo during both video and audio calls
  • When you used audio conferencing software on a Windows 8 guest, participants using the built in speaker, as opposed to headphones, received a severe echo during both video and audio calls.
  • Could not access Help from Virtual Machine Settings dialog box
  • You could not access the Help system by clicking Help on the Virtual Machine Settings dialog box.

New in VMware Player 7.1.1 (Jun 12, 2015)

  • Vmware Player 7.1.1 is a free maintenance release that provides a security fix for our users. For more information regarding the security fix, go to https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2015-0004.html.

New in VMware Player 7.1.0 (Feb 18, 2015)

  • The following issues were resolved in VMware Player 7.1:
  • A Linux guest OS booted on EFI firmware sometimes failed to respond to the keyboard and mouse if any mouse motion occurred during a short window of time during OS boot. This issue has been resolved.
  • You could not compact or defragment a persistent disk. This issue has been resolved.
  • The UI sometimes crashed when a user copied and pasted a file between two Windows guests. This issue has been resolved.
  • Rendering corruption in UI elements in Fedora 20 guests with 3D enabled has been resolved.
  • The following issues might occur in VMware Player 7.1:
  • Using certain Microsoft Office 2013 applications in a Windows 7 or later guest operating system can cause the guest to crash or the Workstation UI to become unresponsive
  • For example, if you use Outlook 2013 to compose and read email, after a while, the guest might crash, or after you use Word 2013 for a while, the Workstation UI might stop responding.
  • Workaround: Turn off the 3D acceleration feature. From the menu bar, select VM > Settings > Display, and deselect Accelerate 3D Graphics.
  • Using a USB headset with a Windows 8 or later guest operating system does not work
  • Because most USB headsets expect a USB 2.0 controller, whereas Windows 8 and later guest operating systems use a USB 3.0 controller by default, you cannot use USB headsets with Windows 8 or later guests.
  • Workaround: Change the USB controller of the guest from USB 3.0 to USB 2.0.
  • Using the Easy Install feature with a virtual machine that uses EFI fails if the disk size is larger than 2TB
  • If you attempt to select a hard disk larger than 2TB, the following error message appears: The specified virtual disk size is incompatible with Easy Install and may prevent the guest from booting properly. The disk must be smaller than 2 TB to use Easy Install.
  • Workaround: Either choose a hard disk whose size is equal to or smaller than 2TB, or install the guest operating system manually.
  • Cannot access Help from Virtual Machine Settings dialog box
  • You cannot access the Help system by clicking Help on the Virtual Machine Settings dialog box.
  • Workaround: Select Player > Help > Help Topics to access the help system and use the Search tab or Content tab to find the help topic.

New in VMware Player 7.0.0 (Dec 2, 2014)

  • New Operating System Support
  • Support has been added for the following guest operating systems:
  • Windows 8.1 Update
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Windows 10 Technical Preview (Experimental support)
  • Ubuntu 14.10
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • CentOS 7
  • OpenSUSE 13.2
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12
  • VMware Hardware Version 11
  • Hardware versions introduce new virtual hardware functionality and new features while enabling VMware to run legacy operating systems in virtual machines.
  • New features included in this hardware version:
  • New CPU enablement, including Intel Haswell microarchitecture extension support.
  • Workstation 11 is optimized to take advantage of new Haswell extensions, delivering up to 45% improvement in CPU-intensive operations like multimedia, encryption/decryption, and other strenuous performance tests.
  • Updated xHCI controller
  • Updated NDIS drive
  • Allocate up to 2GB video memory to a virtual machine

New in VMware Player 6.0.4 (Oct 31, 2014)

  • Fixes memory issue in Workstation on Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012.

New in VMware Player 6.0.3 (Jul 2, 2014)

  • VMware Player 6.0.3 has been updated to the OPENSSL library version openssl-0.9.8za where necessary to address CVE-2014-0224 , CVE-2014-0198, CVE-2010-5298, and CVE-2014-3470.

New in VMware Player 6.0.2 (Apr 22, 2014)

  • KVM mode has been added to VMware Player.
  • Improved compatibility and audio performance with certain USB audio and video devices.
  • The VMware Tools can be properly updated when upgrading VMware Player to a newer version.
  • The VMware Player UI now displays correctly when powering on an old hardware version.

New in VMware Player 6.0.1 (Oct 26, 2013)

  • Download All Components Now button not working.
  • When you navigate to Player > File > Player Preferences and click the Download All Components Now button, the button does not work as intended.
  • Workaround: Update your installation of Player by selecting Check for software components as needed in the Player Preferences dialog.
  • Workstation or Player on Windows freezes if another application is frozen.
  • What's going on: Workstation or Player incorrectly attempts to communicate with the frozen application and is stuck waiting for it to respond.
  • Virtual machine hangs while powering off
  • Rarely, virtual machines will cease functioning (hang) while powering off, particularly if the guest OS was in the middle of a BSOD or kernel panic.
  • Workaround: If the virtual machine hangs while powering off, you may have to terminate the vmx process manually. Updating to Workstation 10.0.1 should resolve the issue.
  • Easy Install does not recognize RTM builds of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 disc
  • In the new virtual machine wizard, when you select a disc or ISO of the RTM build of Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2, the image is not recognized. Easy Install does not work with the RTM builds of those operating systems.
  • Workaround: When creating a new virtual machine, you must choose I will install the operating system later and manually install the guest operating systems from disc. An update to Fusion 6.0.1 or Fusion 6.0.2 resolves this issue.

New in VMware Player 6.0.0 (Sep 6, 2013)

  • VMware Player 6 Plus:
  • With the release of VMware Player 6 VMware is introducing a commercial version of VMware Player called VMware Player 6 Plus. A license key for VMware Player can be purchased from the VMware online store. Licensed versions of VMware Player can be used for commercial purposes, the warning text in the title bar will be suppressed and VMware Player 6 Plus can run restricted virtual machines. VMware Player is still available for Free for personal use. Please read the End User License Agreement for specific terms and conditions.
  • Installation Options:
  • VMware Player installation has been enhanced with configuration settings to allow unattended installation of VMware Player using enterprise software configuration management tools. VMware Player now allows the EULA to be suppressed, a destination directory to be set, to opt out of the User Experience Improvement Program, Desktop and start menu shortcuts to not be created, the serial key to be passed automatically installed, the software update URL and a support contact URL to be configured.
  • Simplified UI Mode:
  • Many of our customers would like to create virtual machines and provide them to their employees and students without enabling them to create virtual machines or modify VMware Player settings. VMware Player 6 includes a Simplified UI mode that can be set to hide these menu items.
  • New Operating System Support:
  • Support for Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Enterprise, Windows Server 2012 R2, Ubuntu 13.10 and the latest Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat and OpenSUSE releases.
  • VMware Hardware Version 10:
  • This version of VMware Player includes VMware hardware Version 10. Hardware versions introduce new virtual hardware functionality and new features while enabling VMware to run legacy operating systems in our virtual machines. New features included in this hardware version:
  • 16 vCPUs
  • Virtual Machines can now run with up to 16 virtual CPUs. This enables very processor intensive applications to be run in a virtual machine.
  • Note: Running Virtual Machines with 16 vCPUs requires that both your host and guest operating system support 16 logical processors. Your physical machine must have at least 8 cores with hyper-threading enabled to power on a virtual machine with this configuration.
  • 8 Terabyte disks
  • Virtual machines can now include virtual disks greater than 2 Terabytes. Given the limitations of most operating systems to boot from disks greater than 2 Terabytes, These large disks are most useful as secondary drives for file storage.
  • Note: To use a disk greater than 2TB for a boot disk, your guest operating system would need to boot using EFI in order to read a GPT formatted disk which is required to access all of the sectors on a disk of this size. Additionally, the Buslogic controller is not capable of supporting a disk greater than 2TB.
  • USB Improvements
  • USB 3 Streams have been implemented to enable high speed transfer of files from USB 3 external storage devices that support this technology. For customers running on Workstation 10 on laptops with small hard disks, large data files, video files etc., can be stored on an external USB 3 storage device and accessed quickly from within the virtual machine.
  • VMware has also addressed issues Intel, NEC, AMD, TI and Linux Kernel host xHCI drivers to improve overall USB 3 compatibility and performance.
  • SSD Pass-through
  • Windows 8 is capable of detecting when it is being run from a solid state drive (SSD) and optimizes itself for this hardware. In Workstation 10, the guest operating system will be able to detect when the Virtual Machine Disk file is being stored on an SSD drive and the operating system can make the same optimizations when it is running in a virtual machine.
  • Many additional changes have been made to this Hardware Version including some performance improvements, power savings and compatibility with new processors. We have also made significant improvements in the startup time of VMware Player and in Windows boot time when running Windows virtual machines.
  • Expiring Virtual Machines:
  • VMware has enhanced the capabilities of Restricted Virtual Machines to include the ability to expire on a specified date and time. This capability enables our customers to create virtual machines to be shared with employees, students, customers, contractors etc. that will run until their contract terminates, demo runs out or course ends.
  • These restricted and expiring virtual machines can be run in VMware Player 6 Plus but requires VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion Professional to create the Expiring Restricted virtual machine.

New in VMware Player 5.0.2 (Mar 8, 2013)

  • On a Windows 7 host, when you plug and unplug a headset several times, the audio card of the guest would not work. This has been fixed in Workstation 9.0.2.
  • When installing VMware Tools in Linux virtual machines, the The default screen resolution options have been standardized to 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x800 for the initial login. After login, resolution can be set to any value the user desires or Autofit can be used.
  • Image copy/paste now correctly function with Solaris 10 and 11 guests.
  • The list of available NICs in the Automatic Bridging Settings dialog window is now refreshed without restarting Player.
  • A memory leak that impacted Windows hosts and guests has been fixed.
  • When running in a Linux distribution using the GNOME 3 desktop environment, Desktop folders now open as expected.
  • VMware Tools no longer crashes on Windows 2008 Server Core x64 SP2 operating system, with the following error:
  • VMware Tools unrecoverable error: (vthread-3)
  • Exception 0xc0000005 (access violation) has occurred.
  • However, Windows 2008 Server Core x64 SP2 is not a supported operating system for VMware Workstation.
  • Scrolling with a Lenovo ThinkPad UltraNav scroll button no longer requires excessive force.

New in VMware Player 5.0.1 (Nov 8, 2012)

  • This release of VMware Player adds the following new features and support:
  • Support for Ubuntu 12.10 as a host and guest has been added to Player 5.0.1
  • Solaris 11 has been added to guest OS list.
  • The following issues are resolved in VMware Player 5.0.1:
  • When powering on a virtual machine with Binary Translation on a SMEP-capable CPU, Player no longer causes the host to reset. If you run Windows 8 hosts on IvyBridge processors, VMware strongly recommends that you update your installation of Player.
  • Several security vulnerabilities have been addressed, including updating third party libraries.
  • For host systems with more than 4GB of memory, Player will use more of the available memory to run virtual machines.
  • The ability to mount a .vmdk file as a drive by right-clicking the file in File Explorer has been restored.
  • Occasionally, certain elements in the Windows 8 user interface were incorrectly displayed. This has been fixed.
  • After disconnecting certain USB devices from a virtual machine, Player would prevent devices from being reconnected without restarting the virtual machine. A more comprehensive error handling code has been added to prevent this problem from occurring.
  • To improve application startup performance, the data being collected as part of the optional User Experience Improvement Program will no longer be aggregated on every launch of Player.
  • Easy Install on the Linux version of Player now recognize all compatible operating systems.
  • The VMware monitor has been updated to work with Linux kernel 3.5.
  • Animated cursors are now displayed correctly in a virtual machine.

New in VMware Player 4.0.4 (Jun 14, 2012)

  • General Issues:
  • Linux guests running the Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later could not be pinged from the host via an IPv6 address.
  • On rare occasions, Linux guests would suddenly fail to Autofit or enter Unity.
  • Unity mode would exit if the title bar of an application contained certain non UTF-8 encoded extended ASCII characters.
  • On Windows hosts, the VMware Workstation user interface sometimes became unresponsive when minimized from full-screen mode if the suggestion balloon was being displayed.
  • On Windows hosts, the user interface sometimes became unresponsive if the application was rendered on an extended display that was abruptly disconnected.
  • Security Issues:
  • VMware host Checkpoint file memory corruption
  • Input data was not properly validated when loading Checkpoint files. This issue could have allowed an attacker with the ability to load a specially crafted Checkpoint file to execute arbitrary code on the host.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-3288 to this issue.
  • VMware virtual machine remote device denial of service
  • A device (such as CD-ROM or keyboard) that is available to a virtual machine while physically connected to a system that does not run the virtual machine is referred to as a remote device. Traffic coming from remote virtual devices was incorrectly handled. This issue could have allowed an attacker who was capable of manipulating the traffic from a remote virtual device to crash the virtual machine.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-3289 to this issue.

New in VMware Player 4.0.3 (May 10, 2012)

  • Resolved Issues:
  • VMware floppy device out-of-bounds memory write
  • Due to a flaw in the virtual floppy configuration it was possible to perform an out-of-bounds memory write. This vulnerability allowed a guest user to crash the VMX process or to potentially execute code on the host.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-2449 to this issue.
  • VMware SCSI device unchecked memory write
  • Due to a flaw in the SCSI device registration it was possible to perform an unchecked write into memory. This vulnerability allowed a guest user to crash the VMX process or to potentially execute code on the host.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2012-2450 to this issue.

New in VMware Player 4.0.2 (Jan 26, 2012)

  • What's New:
  • Ubuntu 11.10 is supported as a host.
  • Fedora 16 is supported as a guest.
  • Many customer-reported issues have been resolved.
  • Resolved Issues:
  • The ACLs on the PID files needed improvement. VMware thanks Inode0 for bringing this to our attention.
  • Releasing input from the guest to the host, for example, moving the cursor from the virtual machine window to the host screen, failed with an unrecoverable error.
  • Copying and pasting from a guest to an Ubuntu 11.10 host failed.
  • Shared folders did not work in Fedora 16 and OpenSuse 12.1 guests.
  • In Ubuntu 11.10 hosts, key repeat was disabled after ungrabbing or quitting VMware Player.
  • On a Windows host, a virtual machine configured to use a physical disk or partition failed to power on if the host had a volume backed by more than one physical disk, for example, a RAID system.

New in VMware Player 4.0.1 Build 528992 (Nov 21, 2011)

  • Highlights of VMware Player 4.0.1 functionality include:
  • Graphics performance and compatibility enhancements.
  • Ubuntu 11.10 is officially supported as a guest operating system.
  • Disk and memory management issues have been addressed.
  • Many customer-reported issues have been resolved.
  • The following issues are resolved in VMware Player 4.0.1:
  • Windows 7 guest installation failed after powering on the virtual machine with the error A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now.
  • VMware Tools failed with the message VMware Tools unrecoverable error.
  • VMware Tools failed to start in Fedora 15 guests.
  • An Ubuntu 11.10 guest crashed with a signal 11 error if you installed or upgraded VMware Tools.
  • On hosts with Nvidia GeForce and Quadro video cards, some of the clouds in the Unigine Heaven Benchmark application were drawn solid black.
  • Easy Install did not properly function on Ubuntu 11.10.
  • CD/DVD mount Linux.iso failed while installing VMware Tools in Ubuntu 11.10 guests.
  • The AltGr key was not working in an Ubuntu guest in Unity mode when the host and guest keyboards were both set to a layout that contained the AltGr key.

New in VMware Player 4.0.0 Build 471780 (Oct 6, 2011)

  • The display technology has been changed to provide a better experience for Unity users and users who have multiple monitors. These changes also allow you to add a projector to your laptop without restarting your virtual machine.
  • Virtual machines can now support up to 64GB of memory. The host system should have more than 64GB of memory to use this feature.
  • An HD Audio device is available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2 guests. The HD Audio device is compatible with the RealTek ALC888 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio Codec.
  • USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = “true”. Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.
  • Bluetooth devices on the host can now be shared with Windows guests. With the latest hardware version, Bluetooth devices that are paired to the host system radio are available to Windows guests and can be paired from within the guest. You should not pair Bluetooth audio devices, such as headphones, or Bluetooth input devices, such as keyboards and mice, to a guest.

New in VMware Player 3.1.4 build 3385536 (Mar 30, 2011)

  • In Player 3.1, the default main memory VA cache size (mainMem.vaCacheSize) for 32-bit Windows guests was reduced to accommodate 3D emulation memory requirements. However, the reduced value resulted in performance loss. For 3.1.4, the default main memory VA cache size has been be increased to 1000 MB and performance is improved.
  • Because Player failed to identify more than 10 USB host controllers in newer Windows guests, some USB devices did not appear in the Removable Devices menu. Now Player shows all USB devices in the Removable Devices menu as long as they are connected to the first identified 16 USB controllers.
  • The application vmware-modconfig UI could not start up in a KDE 4 session in a SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 11 environment.
  • VMware Tools upgrade could be started by a non-administrator user from the VMware Tools Control Panel in a Windows guest. In this release, only administrator users can start VMware Tools upgrade from the VMware Tools Control Panel. To prevent non-administrator users from starting VMware Tools upgrade from a guest by using other applications, set isolation.tools.autoinstall.disable to TRUE in the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file.
  • When a virtual machine running on a Windows host was used to access an Omron Industrial CP1L Programmable Logic Controller, Player generated an unrecoverable error.
  • When using NAT virtual networking on Windows hosts, the traceroute command did not work when used within virtual machines.
  • The Easy Install feature did not work for Fedora 14 guest operating systems.
  • During VMware Tools installation on a Fedora 14 64-bit guest operating system, the following warning message was generated while building the vsock module: case value '255' not in enumerated type 'socket_state'.
  • The Easy Install feature did not work for Red Hat Linux 6 guest operating systems.
  • The VMware Tools HGFS provider DLL caused a deadlock when making calls to the WNetAddConnection2 function from an application such as eEye Rentina in a Windows guest operating system.
  • There was no option to disable guest time sync when a host resumes. Now you can set time.synchronize.resume.host to FALSE in the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file to disable guest time sync when a host resumes. See VMware Knowledge Base Article 1189 for other time sync options.
  • Setting a hidden attribute on a file in a shared folder from a Windows guest on a Linux host failed with an error. This problem caused applications such as SVN checkout to fail when checking out to shared folders on Linux hosts from Windows guests.

New in VMware Player 3.1.3 Build 324285 (Nov 22, 2010)

  • When you install VMware Player on an operating system that uses a post-2.6.34 Linux kernel, the vmmon module fails to compile.
  • The vmxnet and vsock guest modules fail to compile on operating systems that use post-2.6.32 Linux kernels.
  • When you install VMware Tools on an operating system that uses a post-2.6.34 Linux kernel, the vsock.ko module fails to build.
  • Unity mode does not work with an Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit guest operating system.
  • An unrecoverable error occurs when you select the Novell NetWare, Sun Solaris, or Other guest operating system type in the New Virtual Machine wizard.

New in VMware Player 3.1.2 Build 301548 (Sep 27, 2010)

  • Security Fixes:
  • VMware Player 3.x addresses an installer security issue
  • The VMware Player 3.x installer loads an index.htm file located in the current working directory on which VMware Player 3.x is being installed. This might enable attackers to display a malicious file if they manage to get their file onto the system prior to installation.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2010-3277 to this issue.
  • Third party libpng updated to version 1.2.44
  • A buffer overflow condition in libpng is addressed that could potentially lead to code execution with the privileges of the application using libpng. Two potential denial of service issues are also addressed in the update.
  • The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CVE-2010-1205, CVE-2010-0205, and CVE-2010-2249 to these issues.
  • Installation, Upgrade, and Compatibility:
  • In some cases copying an index.html file into the same directory as the VMware Player 3.1.1 installer executable on Windows hosts might cause the VMware Player installer user interface to fail.
  • On Linux hosts, if the screen saver becomes active during the VMware Player software update process, the update might fail.
  • When downloading software updates via a slow Internet connection, you might receive a timeout error resulting in an unsuccessful download.
  • Display:
  • To improve user experience when using Unity mode on Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines, VMware Player disables Aero when entering Unity mode and re-enables it when you exit Unity mode. To override the disabling of Aero, open the vmx configuration file and add unity.allowCompositingInGuest="TRUE".
  • Rebooting an Ubuntu 10.04 host after installing VMware Player, might cause the System Tools option under the Application menu to disappear.
  • On Linux hosts, the Cycle to Next/Previous open VM button might not appear consistently in the VMware Player full screen toolbar.
  • Attempting to power on a Windows 7 virtual machine named using non-ASCII characters on Ubuntu 10.04 hosts might cause display issues in the Unity Start menu.
  • Enabling Aero on hosts with Intel Integrated Graphics processing unit might cause display issues in a virtual machine.
  • On Windows hosts, you might experience some usability issues while attempting to interact with Fedora 13 virtual machine applications in Unity mode.
  • On Fedora 13 virtual machines, dragging guest applications along the edges of the guest display might cause the mouse functions to become unresponsive.
  • On Japanese version of Windows, using non-ASCII characters to name the host might cause the Start menu to not show in Unity mode.
  • Miscellaneous:
  • The DNS server information might not refresh when the virtual machine switches between multiple NICs, such as wired and wireless. Thus leading to a failure in looking up hosts with their DNS names when guest is using NAT.
  • If your host system has three parallel ports you might not be able map these ports non-sequentially.
  • On Ubuntu guests, the vmware-user component of VMware Tools might become unresponsive after Autologon is enabled on the guest and cause drag and drop or copy and paste operations to fail.
  • USB devices with vendor ID 0x1366 might be identified as being manufactured by Asahi KASEI instead of SEGGER.
  • Dragon Medical 10.1 from Nuance might not run with more than one core on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit guests.
  • On Windows 7 guests, you must run a New Hardware scan from the Device Manager menu for Logitech USB audio devices to be recognized. USB devices disconnected from the guest might still appear to be connected in the guest, and the guest might not allow you to reconnect them.
  • On some Windows guests, the volume control keys and a few other multimedia keys might not work in a virtual machine.
  • Error in NetBIOS forwarding in NAT leads to incorrect resolution of WINS name of the virtual machine.
  • On Linux hosts, launching a virtual machine application shortcut that includes either non-ASCII characters or a long path might not work on the first attempt.

New in VMware Player 2.5.2 Build 156735 (Apr 2, 2009)

  • VMware provides support for the following operating systems for Player 2.5.2:
  • Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2
  • Asianux Server 3.0 Service Pack 1
  • openSUSE 11.1
  • Ubuntu 8.10
  • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
  • VMware provides experimental support to the following operating systems for Player:
  • Asianux Server 3 Service Pack 1
  • Fedora 11
  • FreeBSD 7.1
  • Mandriva Linux 2009
  • Microsoft Windows 7
  • Novell SLE11.0
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8
  • Sun Solaris 10 Update 6
  • Ubuntu 9.04

New in VMware Player 2.5.1 Build 126130 (Nov 21, 2008)

  • Japanese localization — A localized version of VMware Player is now available in Japanese for Windows hosts.
  • Smart card support for Linux guests — Smart cards are now experimentally supported with Linux guests.
  • Unity mode on Linux guests — Although support for Unity mode on Linux guests is still experimental, repainting of application windows is much improved.
  • 3-D graphics — Additional improvements have been made to improve 3-D performance on Windows XP guests.

New in VMware Player 2.5.0 (Oct 1, 2008)

  • Major New Features :
  • Unity view — Integrate your favorite guest applications with your host. Open the application window, enter Unity view, and the VMware Player window is automatically minimized. The guest application windows look just like host application windows, but with color-coded borders. You can access the virtual machine's Start menu (for Windows virtual machines) or Applications menu (for Linux virtual machines) by placing the mouse pointer over the host's Start or Applications menu, or by using a key combination.
  • Installer bundle for Linux hosts — Installing VMware Player on Linux hosts just got a lot easier. The new bundle format provides a graphical UI wizard for most Linux operating systems. With a few mouse clicks, VMware Player is installed. For users who want a custom installation, a command-line interface provides complete control.
  • Accelerated 3-D graphics on Windows XP guests — VMware Player 2.5 virtual machines now work with applications that use DirectX 9 accelerated graphics with shaders up through Shader Model 2.0 on Windows XP guests. Hosts can be running Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Linux.
  • Usability Enhancements:
  • Full screen mode — While in full screen mode, you can now switch from one powered-on virtual machine to another.
  • Suspend and exit — Both Windows and Linux hosts now support suspending the virtual machine when exiting.
  • Change preferences — Set preferences, such as how devices are displayed in VMware Player.
  • Expanded in-product help system — When you choose Help > Help Topics, or click a Help button in a dialog box, you have access to twice as much content as was provided in VMware Player 2.0.
  • Performance Improvements:
  • Folder sharing and dragging, dropping, copying, and pasting text and files — Transferring files between virtual machines or between host and guests using these features is up to 25 percent faster.
  • Memory allocation — Change the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine.
  • New Platform Capabilities:
  • (Experimental) Support for smart cards in virtual machines — You can plug a smart card reader into a host and insert your smart card to authenticate yourself on your host or on a guest. Smart cards can be shared between the host and guests or between guests.
  • Text copy and paste enhancements — On Windows guests, you can copy and paste text in rich text format, and copy up to 4MB of text. (On Linux guests, the old limitations still apply. You can copy and paste up to 64K of plain text.)

New in VMware Player 2.0.5 (Aug 31, 2008)

  • FreeType was updated to 2.3.7, resolving several security vulnerabilities reported as CVE-2008-1806, CVE-2008-1807, and CVE-2008-1808.
  • Cairo was updated to 1.4.14, resolving an integer overflow vulnerability CVE-2007-5503.
  • Several ActiveX security issues, reported as CVE-2008-3691, CVE-2008-3692, CVE-2008-3693, CVE-2008-3694, CVE-2008-3695, CVE-2007-5438, and CVE-2008-3696, were resolved.