How to Kill Vmware

VMware is a leading provider of virtualization software. Virtualization allows one machine to virtually host one or more operating systems within the native operating system. The technology reduces costs and increases administrative flexibility and control, but also comes with a new set of potential issues. This article addresses how to shut down your VMware session, and what to do if your virtualized OS has locked up.

Instructions

Ending a VMware Fusion Session in Mac

1

VMware Fusion is a popular application that is often used to run a virtual Windows host within Mac OS. The preferred way to end a Windows session in the VMware Fusion environment is to shut down Windows normally, by clicking the Start button and then Shut Down (Windows XP) or by the "Shutdown" button (Windows Vista and Windows 7).

Once your Windows virtual machine has shut down, you can close VMware Fusion in Mac by clicking the red X in the top-left hand corner of the VMware window.

2

If your VMware Fusion session has locked up you may not be able to perform a graceful shutdown. Return the cursor to Mac by pressing the Control and Command keys at the same time. If youre in full screen mode, press Control, Command and Return simultaneously.

The next steps should get you out of your frozen session, but by performing them you may lose any unsaved work on your virtual machine.

3

Try to shut down the machine via the VMware Fusion toolbar. Click Virtual Machine then select Shut Down Guest.

4

If VMware Fusion is completely locked up, youll need to use "Force Quit" to kill the session. Press the Command, Option and Esc keys at the same time. From this window you can immediately end programs running in Mac OS. Select VMware Fusion from the list. Click the Force Quit button.

Ending a VMware Session in Windows

5

Try to shut down your guest operating system through its native shutdown procedures.

The next steps should get you out of your frozen session, but by performing them you may lose any unsaved work on your virtual machine.

6

If you cannot shut down the machine using the guest OS shutdown procedure, you can manually kill the process in Windows Task Manager. Right click the task bar and select Task Manager. From the Process tab, locate the VMware process and click End Process.

7

If youre running multiple virtual machines and dont know which VMware process to kill, youll can use Process Explorer (see Resources). Download and install the free utility. Launch Process Explorer and locate your frozen virtual machine by its Windows friendly name. Right click the name of the process and select Kill Process.

8

If you are still unable to end the VMware session, reboot your host machine.