download the new version for windows VMware Workstation Player 17.5.22583795

If the Hyper-V hypervisor is active on the system, VMWare's product sets aside its own virtualization platform and uses the Hyper-V APIs to create the virtualized environment on which to run a guest. OK, so what's the problem? It's actually not a problem at all, in a way, at least not since Workstation/Player 17 I believe, which introduces 'play nice with Hyper-V' capability. An existing install that's upgraded to 22H? will honor the existing settings btw. Microsoft deems these protections to outweigh the performance hit, so as of 22H1 or 22H2 update, memory integrity protection, Device Guard, and Credential Guard are enabled by default on a new OS install, if the EFI settings have the CPU virtualization capabilities (VT-d, etc.) enabled. This has some detrimental performance impact (mostly unnoticeable in normal use, except in gaming), but the advantage is that with the OS running as a 'guest,' with all hardware access having to cross the virtualization boundary, all kinds of additional security features become possible to prevent/mitigate modern attack vectors.

Basically, with VBS the entire host operating system is actually not running as the host at all, it's running as a Hyper-V guest on top of the Hyper-V platform. These include Device Guard, Credential Guard, and core (memory) isolation. So, what's going on with this OS that creates this new problem for Type 2 (hosted) hypervisors like VMWare Player/Workstation or VirtualBox? Windows 11 Pro, by default, doesn't have the Hyper-V features enabled (to actually run Hyper-V guests), but it (like Windows 11 Home, btw) does use the Hyper-V hypervisor for certain new 'Virtualization-Based Security' (VBS) features. The 'normal' steps I found all over the web weren't enough! Web sleuthing finally got me what I needed, and for posterity and future searchers I want to document what I did to achieve the coveted CPL0 monitor mode and improved VMWare virtualization performance under Win11. I had a very hard time getting rid of Hyper-V in my setup, on a Windows 11 Pro host.

Download the new version for windows VMware Workstation Player 17.5.22583795