Installing Home Assistant on VMWare Player / Workstation 16 (or 17)

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21

Hi David, when you start the VMWare Player through task scheduler, the only way you will see it running later on, is to select the option " Run only when user ist logged in".

Which kind of defeats the purpose I guess, because you would want the machine to start automatically in the background after a power loss / power restore without any manual actions required - In which case you must select “Run whether user is logged in or not”

Unfortunately with that option ticked, you will never get a gui, even if you log in afterwards.

22

FYI - This guide works perfectly with Windows 11 and VMWARE Player 17.

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23

Just edit your vmx file manually, and add:

firmware = "efi"
24

Thanks! This helped me too! Maybe this would be handy to add in the instructions. Looked for over 30 minutes :stuck_out_tongue:

25

In Virtualbox I detected my bluetooth device in the devices tab. Can’t seem to find my bluetooth device here unfortunately.

26

Excellent documentation. Thank you!

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27

Thanks for the guide, now my installation is working.
However the last 2 links are dead, only white blank pages are opening , the ones with vm running in the background /auto restart.

Run VMWare Workstation in the background / Auto launch VMWare VM after reboot 527

Do you guys know of another sourse tutorial to make it autorestart?

28

Are you using the free Player or Workstation (Pro)?

29

I tried both of them .

30

If you are using Workstation Pro, the easiest way is to use the Inbuilt auto-start system.

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The other way is to use cli… Something like
(Stop Command as an example)
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmrun.exe" -T player stop H:\VMware\HomeAssistant\HomeAssistant.vmx soft

See more here

Another way, which IMO offers a lot more control and other options.

31

which only works on w10 and vmware workstation >17

32

True But… The VM doesn’t need to be version 17… :joy:

33

You can make a task in windows task scheduler to perform an unattended HA start.

  • make a text file with this content (change to your individual settigs of course):
    “C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmrun.exe” start “C:\Home Assistant VMware\Homeassistant VMware.vmx”
  • rename the text file something like: AutoStartHA.cmd
  • Configure your PC to automatically restart after a power loss.
  • In the task scheduler make a new task
  • ensure that the task will be executed without anybody being logged in (I believe under general ?)
  • Use the PC start as trigger for the task
  • As action you use the execution of the file you made (AutoStartHA.cmd)
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