This post shows students and new users steps to enable or add TPM support on VMware Player in order to install Windows 11. Microsoft has a straight hardware requirements to run Windows 11. These requirements are not only designed or physical hardware, but also apply to virtual machines as well.
If you’re running a virtualization software like VirtualBox or VMware Player, you may have to follow a workaround to enable pass-through TPM support to the virtual machines from the host computer. As far as I know, VirtualBox doesn’t have this feature, but with VMware Player, you can enable this, and the steps below will show you how to do that.
If you’re running VMware Workstation Pro, there’s no need to apply the configurations steps below. TPM is enabled out of the box. However, the free VMware Player doesn’t have it, and that’s why you must apply the steps below to get TPM enabled.
Without TPM being enabled, your VMs may be unable to receive further dev builds due to missing TPM support.
To get started with enabling TPM support on VMware Player, continue with the steps below.
How to add TPM support on VMware Workstation Player
As mentioned above, without TPM support on the VM, you may not be able to install Windows 11 or receive further dev builds.
To add TPM support, first make sure you’re running VMware Player 16.2 and up. If you’re not already on 16.2 version, upgrade first.
Next, shutdown and close VMWare Manager and make sure it is not running in the background. You can then go to where the virtual machines files are stored. By default, in the Documents folder of your home directory.
C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Virtual Machines\Virtual Machine Name
In the virtual machine folder, find the file with your virtual machine name and the vmx extension (Virtual Machine Configuration File).
Open the file, then scroll down the list of configs and add the following line in the end of the file: managedvm.autoAddVTPM = "software"
Save the file and exit.
Launch VMware Player and open the virtual machine’s settings and check the Trusted Platform Module line on the Hardware tab to view TPM support status.
That should do it!
Conclusion:
This post showed you how to enable TPM support for VMware Player. If you find any error above or have something to add, please use the comment form below.
