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Configuring Miscellaneous Options

You can use the Configuration Editor to set other parameters for your virtual machine.

Require SHIFT in hot key sequences.

Select this box to change hot-key combinations from CTL-ALT-key to CTL-ALT-SHIFT-key. This is useful if you want to prevent certain key combinations (for instance, CTL-ALT-DEL) from being intercepted by VMware Workstation instead of being sent to the guest OS.

Power on when program starts.

Select this box if you want the virtual machine to power on automatically when VMware Workstation is launched. If you choose this option, you will not have an opportunity to modify configuration options prior to booting the virtual machine.

Switch to full screen at every power on.

Select this box if you want the virtual machine to switch immediately to full screen mode when the virtual machine is powered on. The virtual machine will enter full screen mode when you click the Power On button or if you have selected the option to power on when the program starts.

Exit at power off.

Select this box if you want to automatically close the VMware Workstation application when you power off the virtual machine or suspend it to disk. When this option is selected, power off is equivalent to clicking Power Off then File > Exit.

Use APM features of guest OS when suspending.

Select this box if you want to suspend the virtual machine using the APM (Advanced Power Management) features on your system.

Suspend to memory (instead of disk).

Check this box if you want the virtual machine to suspend to memory. By default it will suspend to disk.

Hide partition type of read-only partitions

This option is useful if you are using raw disk partitions, are running multiple operating systems at the same time, and are not using an advanced boot manager, such as PowerQuest's BootMagic or V Communications' System Commander. For example, if you are running Windows NT from a FAT partition and you boot Windows 98 from another partition, Windows 98 sees the partition that Windows NT is running on and attempts to repair that file system. This may damage your disk and/or cause your computer to crash. Partition hiding is not made available if the guest operating system is MS-DOS or Linux because these operating systems do not automatically attempt to check the file systems of other FAT partitions.

Some advanced boot managers, but not basic boot managers such as LILO or NT MultiBoot, solve this problem by changing the partition type of all the partitions not needed by the operating system being booted to "unknown." If you are not using a boot manager, then selecting Disk Partition Hiding has the same effect.

When this option is enabled, only the partitions for which the virtual machine has read/write access are visible to the guest operating system. The other partitions are changed to "unknown" type. In addition, all writes to the master boot record (MBR), where this information is recorded, are intercepted. This allows multiple operating systems to run on the same disk but with different views of the same partitions.

Because of this feature, however, one of these advanced boot manager programs run inside a virtual machine with disk partition hiding enabled will not function properly. If you wish to use an advanced boot manager program or install a new boot manager from within a virtual machine, then the Disk Partition Hiding option should be turned off. See Configuring IDE Drives and Configuring Disk Partitions for more information on configuring and using raw disks.

Find best resolution in full screen mode.

This option is selected by default. When selected, VMware Workstation will choose the best resolution for your virtual machine when it enters full screen mode. If you do not want VMware Workstation to find the best resolution for your virtual machine screen, unselect this option.

Redo Log Directory

If a path name is enabled, VMware Workstation stores all redo logs in that directory. If you have a virtual disk on a remote file system, you may see disk performance improvements by storing the redo logs on a local file system.

Logging level

VMware Workstation always logs important events in a log file, so that if the program crashes, or some other critical event occurs, information is available to help VMware technical support understand the problem, find workarounds, and fix it in a later product release. Log files are normally written to the directory that contains the virtual machine configuration file.

In many cases, however, the logged information is not sufficient. An error message may ask you to run with the logging level set to Debug and try to repeat the problem. This enables additional logging to capture information that may be necessary to identify and fix some problems.

Enabling debugging information makes the log file grow faster and also turns on a large number of internal consistency checks that can slow down execution. For this reason, unless you are trying to reproduce a problem, it is best to run with the level set to Normal.