All VMs Start with Black Screen

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Recently moved all my VMs from Host Win7-64bit to Win8-64bit.

Fresh install of Player v 5.0.2 build-1031769

Computer is Acer Aspire M Intel i5 @ 1.8Ghz

Graphics is Intel HD 4000

 

When any of the various VMs are started from the Powered Off state, the player window will open and a big black screen will appear where the guest display should be shown. The guest OS does indeed boot, right up to the login screen although with no display visible. If I try to click on the close button in the upper right corner, I get a dialog box that says “The Virtual Machine is Busy”. My only option is to end the vmplayer.exe task using task manager. Once I do that, the VM shows state as Powered On in the Library. If I Play it the 2nd time, the VM will resume operating correctly with the proper display at the immediate point where I expected it to be when I ended the vmplayer.exe task earlier.

Presence or absence of Tools in Guest does not affect the problem.

 

All 3 of my VMs have the exact same behavior. Guest operating Systems are: WinXP-SP3-32bit, Win7-64bit built from the VMware Converter, and Server 2008 from the MS eval ISO.

 

Any ideas? Once the play/end task/play sequence is performed the VM works correctly. Until it is shutdown or hibernated. A VM restart does not exhibit this symptom. The problem is reproducible with all VMs every time.

 

Provided vmx for the XP VM and a few logs.

Thanks in advance. I’m so close to having this work it’s even more frustrating than if it didn’t work at all.