In the next few screen shots I created a desktop shortcut for the vmware-kvm.exe and pointed it to the location of my VM I want assigned to the desktop shortcut. To run multiple VMs and switch between them with the configured hot key the vmware-kvm.exe command must be issued once for each VM you want to start or stop in KVM mode. You will run the command: “ vmware-kvm.exe virtual-machine-vmx-file.vmx” where: “virtual-machine-vmx-file.vmx” is the path to the. The second step is to execute the vmware-kvm.exe command with a pointer to the selected VM to run Workstation in KVM mode. Click OK to exit the utility and save you KVM preferences. If you use multiple monitors like I am you can change the physical monitor on which the selected virtual machine runs in full screen mode as shown below. Upon launching “ vmware-kvm.exe –preferences” command you will see a small GUI window that allows you to change the default hot keys in addition to other features for launching and exiting the virtual machine. Launch the VMware KVM executable with the “–preferences” after the command. Open up a command prompt and change to the directory where Workstation is installed. The first step in configuring VMware KVM mode is setting the hotkeys and preferences. *** Not all steps are included in this blog post and the location of your files might be different so please reference Knowledge Base article KB2057914 and VMware KVM Guide (pdf) for detailed information on using the VMware KVM utility. Note: The VMware KVM mode is only available for Windows version of Workstation 10.x.īelow is a brief example with screen shots and short video on how I setup and used VMware KVM mode with desktop shortcuts on my Win 8.1 computer.

Another additional benefit from an IT perspective is running a virtual machine for the user when Windows is launched and the user can seamlessly switch between the operating systems by using the defined hotkey.

The benefit of using the VMware KVM utility is the VMs can be run in full-screen without launching the Workstation 10 interface (no tool bar) and manage their power state via CLI (command line interface). VMware Workstation 10 comes with a handy utility which allows you to switch between active VMs (virtual machines) using a configurable hot key just like a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch.

Vmware workstation player 12 shortkeys