How to Start, Shutdown, or Reboot a VM from the Command Line in VMware Workstation

If you need to start, shutdown or reboot a VMware Workstation virtual machine from the command line, it's very easy to do and can even be used to start or stop a VM using a script or batch file etc. for when your host computer starts for example.

To run the command you will need to open a command prompt and navigate to.
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation

These are the commands to start, stop and restart your VM but you will need to change the path and VMX file name to match your environment.

Here is the link to the video on how to setup the auto start feature in VMware Workstation Pro 17.

Check out our book (VMware Workstation Made Easy) that is designed to take your virtualization skills to the next level!

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[brigadierwilliamwildebeest]

Great video! I wish it was as straight foward as VirtualBox's though 🙂

[SimonM-schz]

Hi ! Thanks for this video
One question : is it possible to suspend a VM the same way you start / stop / reset it ?
Many thanks in advance !

Simon

[KINGLIFERISM]

I got a question. I want to do this to a shortcut. Would you be so kind as to show me how to do that? I been googling for hours. (Literally). I see how to do other things but not specifically that. Reason is I am making a simple launcher for my family (Who are not tech savy) so they can launch a sandbox pc when they travel (using something called sunshine... it is usually used for gaming.... but they will be using a laptop and they need mac services.) so the frontend I am using is called Launchbox and it requires a shortcut. Thank you if you can help out!

[reltecsol]

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmrun" -T ws start "C:\VMs\Windows 10.vmx"

Type the above in notepad and save it as .bat or .cmd file and paste this file in your startup

win+r type shell:startup