I'm experimenting with different Virtual Machines these days, because often running VMWare together with other Virtual Machines (like VirtualBox) might be causing crashes or VM instability – hence it is always best to have VMWare completely stopped. Unfortunately VMWare keeps running a number of respawning processes (vmnat.exe, vmnetdhcp.exe, vmware-authd.exe, vmware-usbarbitrator64.exe) which cannot be killed from Task Manager with Process Kill – End Tree option. Thus to make this services stop it is necessery run from cmd.exe (which is Run as Administrator):
NET STOP "VMware Workstation Server"
NET STOP "VMware USB Arbitration service"
NET STOP "VMware NAT Service"
NET STOP "VMware DHCP Service"
NET STOP "VMware Authorization Service"
If you will be doing regular START / STOP of VMWare on Windows servers it will be handy to create a little batch script stop-vmware.bat containing:
@ECHO OFF
NET STOP "VMware Workstation Server"
NET STOP "VMware USB Arbitration service"
NET STOP "VMware NAT Service"
NET STOP "VMware DHCP Service"
NET STOP "VMware Authorization Service"
Later whether it is necessery to start VMWare from Windows command line execute above services in reverse order (to prevent from getting warnings or errors on vmware dependent services.
NET START "VMware Authorization Service"
NET START "VMware DHCP Service"
NET START "VMware NAT Service"
NET START "VMware USB Arbitration service"
NET START "VMware Workstation Server"
To script it as a start script create file start-vmware.bat with:
NET START "VMware Authorization Service"
NET START "VMware DHCP Service"
NET START "VMware NAT Service"
NET START "VMware USB Arbitration service"
NET START "VMware Workstation Server"
Of course it is possible to also stop / start VMWare from GUI's Windows Services interface by righclicking on services with VMWare names and selecting "Start" / "Stop".
