First of all, since I've been using VMware Player, I've noticed it crashes from time to time on several different computer systems. Much more so than any other applications I'm running. But even worse is the software's total inability to deal with these crashes.
For example, I got a read error so I shut down the VM. However, Windows locked up while shutting down. VMware Player makes no allowance for this. It just tells me the VM is running and gives me an option to power off (which obviously does nothing in this case). There is no "Force Shutdown" option, and I have no choice but to force a shut down of WMware Player.
Now, of course, when I try and run it again, it tells me it can't take ownership of the VM. Research indicates I can go and look for .LCK or .LOCK files or folders.
So I do that but now I get an error when I try and run the VM with this very helpful message: "Error while powering on: Internal Error."
Why do I have to research how the software works? Why is there no option to force a shutdown of a VM? Why is there no option to clean up a crashed VM? Why doesn't the software give helpful error messages? These issues should be anticipated. Why is everything so brittle?
This doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like these cases should be anticipated and some sort of tools should be included to aid in recovery.