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Shutting Down a Virtual Machine Shutting Down a Virtual Machine
As with physical computers, you need to shut down your guest operating system before you power off your virtual machine or team. for example, in a Windows guest operating system, take these steps.
1. Select Shut Down from the Start menu of the guest operating system (inside the virtual machine).
2. Select Shut Down, then click OK.
3. After the guest operating system shuts down, you can turn off the virtual machine. Click Power Off.
Now it is safe to exit VMware Workstation or power off a team.
If you are using a different guest operating system, the procedure is similar. Follow the usual steps to shut down the guest operating system inside your virtual machine, then turn off the virtual machine with the Power Off button.
Power Off vs. Shut Down
The Power Off button is configurable to take advantage of operating systems that recognize a Shut Down command—such as recent versions of Windows.
1. Choose VM > Settings.
2. Click Options.
3. Select Power.
4. Choose Power off or Shut Down Guest from the pull down menu.
  • Power Off—This option emulates turning off the hardware power switch on a computer. The guest operating system immediately terminates. Power Off emulates the behavior of the power button on a computer with AT power hardware.
  • Caution: If a virtual machine is writing to disk when it receives a Power Off command, data corruption may occur.
  • Shut Down Guest—This option sends a restart command to the guest operating system. The exact behavior of the virtual machine on a Shut Down Guest depends on the specific operating system. Shut Down Guest emulates the behavior of the power button on a computer with ATX power hardware.
  • 5. Click OK to save your changes.
    Note: This setting applies only to the current virtual machine.


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