I'm running Windows XP as guest on VMware Player 6.0.1, but I'm getting a black screen. The VM starts up, I
see the XP logo screen as it loads, but then the welcome screen never appears.
It's worth noting that this VM is running inside another VM running a Windows XP guest; the outer-host is Windows 8.
Everything is responsive, I can move the innermost-machine window around, even resize it, but it won't display
the welcome screen.
According to ( Ubuntu 11.04 VM shows a black screen in VMware Player ) and
( Issue while loading vmware fusion 3.0 ), enabling hardware graphics
acceleration may fix black-screen issues for some guests, but my VMs already have it enabled, and my screen doesn't
start black, it goes black, so I don't think it's the same issue. I've also looked at ( Get black screen at logon/welcome? ), but as I've shown in my screenshot, adjusting the screen resolution of the guest doesn't help.
What is the problem here, and if it's fixable, how so?
Please, no harsh-comments along the lines of "don't run a VM in a VM!!!". I'm aware it's not a recommended activity,
this is just for fun.
Best Answer
In the Virtual Machine Settings of the guest that is blank, under Hardware, Display, try turning off Accelerate 3D graphics.
When I have the box on, under Linux Mint 16 (ubuntu), the guest will be black on every screen except the main screen--unless I turn off the 3D acceleration as noted above.