I'm looking for a way to safely shut down my Windows system after a few hours while keeping my VMware workstation instances running for about 4 hours before everything powers off. I've tried using the command prompt with `shutdown.exe -f -s -t 14400`, but I've ended up with some of my VM instances getting corrupted, likely because they didn't have time to shut down gracefully. Does anyone have tips or better methods for handling this situation?
4 Answers
You might want to avoid shutting your system down entirely. Leaving it on could be a simpler solution, but if you really want to shutdown, consider creating a batch file that shuts down your VMs using `vmrun`, and then add a host shutdown command at the end. This way, you can control the order of operations.
The `-f` switch only gives the process a few seconds to shut down, which might not be enough for your VMs to save their states. VMware Workstation can be configured to pause VMs on shutdown, which could help. Also, what's the reason for shutting down? Hibernation might be a better option for you.
I'm curious about what you mean by corruption. Are the VMs not booting up afterward or is there some data loss? I've been using VMware without problems during shutdowns, so I'm wondering what might be different in your case.
It sounds like the `-f` flag is the culprit since it forcefully shuts down the system. You should consider scripting the shutdown process for your VMs before actually shutting down the host. This way, they'll have time to shut down properly and you can avoid corruption issues.
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