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The Summary/Console Display
The main part of the VMware Workstation window is the summary/console display. This area is a tabbed window used primarily for:
  • Displaying the VMware Workstation Home Page
  • Displaying the Summary View
  • Displaying the Console View
  • Displaying the VMware Workstation Home Page
    When no virtual machine is running, you see the VMware Workstation home page in the console. Use the icons on the home page to start creating a new virtual machine or open an existing virtual machine.
    To close the home page, click the X to the right of the tabs on a Windows host or the X on the tab on a Linux host. To display the home page again, choose View > Go to Home Tab.
    One Window or Many—Your Choice
    In VMware Workstation 5, you can open multiple virtual machines in the same Workstation window. Or you can launch multiple instances of VMware Workstation. You can even run multiple instances of VMware Workstation and have more than one virtual machine in each window. Just be sure you have enough memory and processor power to handle the number of virtual machines you want to run.
    Displaying the Summary View
    When you select a tab for a powered off virtual machine or team, Workstation displays a summary of the configuration information about that item.
    Summary View for a Virtual Machine (Windows Host)
    You can examine settings in the Summary view at any time. However, some settings can be changed only when the virtual machine or team is powered off (not running or suspended). See Adding, Configuring and Removing Devices in a Virtual Machine or Editing Team Settings for information about editing settings.
    The Status Bar
    In the Summary view, messages from VMware Workstation appear in the status bar, at the bottom left of the summary window.

    The Status Bar
    For example, the status bar displays an alert if the VMware Tools on a virtual machine do not match your version of Workstation. (For details about VMware Tools, see Installing VMware Tools.)
    On a Windows host the status bar displays an icon for each removable device. Right-click an icon to disconnect it or edit its configuration.
    Displaying the Console View
    When you select the tab for an active virtual machine, the console displays what you would see on the monitor screen as if it was a hardware PC.
    Windows Host Console Window
    Linux Host Console Window
    See Displaying Teams for a complete description of the console view for teams.
    When a virtual machine is active, its virtual machine name is displayed in a tab at the top of the virtual machine window. This is especially valuable to identify a virtual machine that is a member of a Team. To switch from one active virtual machine to another, click the tab of the virtual machine you want to see. It's like a soft KVM machine switch. You can use this feature in the windowed view and also in the quick switch view.
    Tabs make it easy to switch among active virtual machines (Windows host)
    If you want to view more than one virtual machine at the same time, you can open multiple Workstation windows and launch one or more virtual machines in each.


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