How to run virtual machine as windows services

If you are a user of VM workstation, you can run virtual machine as windows service. So that log out from host machine does not impact on running guest OS. Even if you reboot host, it will automatically restart guest machine. So there will be no manual intervention. How to do that?

Step1 download windows resource tool kit and install in host 

Step2 go to start menu>All Program>windows resource kit tool and open windows resource kit

instsrv.exe TEST “c:\Program
Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\srvany.exe”

For this Article, I will add a “TEST” service.

Step3 start menu>run>regedit.exe>ok

HKLM>system>CurrentControlSet>Services>Test

right click on to TEST>New>Key and name it as parameters

right click on parameters>string value and name it as Application

right click application>modify and type

“C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmware.exe” –X “D:\WINVM\test.vmx”

Here, D:\winvm\test.vmx is the location and .vmx file of guest machine.

Apply and start the service.

Start menu>All program>VMware>VMware Workstation>Edit>Preferences>Check Keep VMs running after workstation closes.