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I'm trying to configure my guest machines to automatically startup when the host boots up. I've tried configuring the guest machines to start in the vmware server console and enabled the startup options in the vmware management interface, but they still won't startup automatically

regard
Axel

Host? Guest? Versions?

I remember scarcely, the account that starts the vmware machines should be set up to system account or a user that has administrative rights.

for more detailed analysis we need more info as voly announced above..

I'm currently experiencing the same problems as Voly. I run VMWare Server 1.0.0 build 24927 on a Windows 2003 Server host. I created a Windows 2003 Server guest and would like to configure the host to start the guest automatically at startup.

Actually I think I have set everything properly: within the VMWare server console I see at the details of the guest at "options" --> "Startup/Showdown":

Run this virtual machine as: Local system account (I also tried out to configure the local Administrator explicitly but this also doesn't worked)

Startup / Shutdown options:
On host startup --> power on virtual machine
on host shutdown --> shut down guest operating system

Anything else I need to configure? Which component is actually starting the guests? Is there any service? I had a look at the "VMWare ..." services, all of them are configured to start automatically and they are running. Also, I don't see any errors in the event log.

I hope you have a clue...

Thanks!

PS: I might mention that I configured the disk of the virtual machine to allocate space dynamically. I don't know if this option is related to the problem that the guest doesn't start automatically.

Just wanted to let everyone know this worked for me.
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=416677&#416677


Autostart of VMs on my win2k3 SP1 host was not working until I applied the registry fix:

----------------------------------------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vmserverdWin32]
"DependOnService"=hex(7):52,00,50,00,43,00,53,00,53,00,00,00,56,00,4d,00,41,00,\
75,00,74,00,68,00,64,00,53,00,65,00,72,00,76,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,00,00,00,\
00

---------------------------------------------------

Now my 5 VMs start automatically when the host starts. I have them set to run under the local system account. I never had the issue where they wouldn't start at all, just couldn't autostart them before.