Software Update: VMware Workstation Player 12.5.3 build 5115892

VMware has released version 12.5.3 of Workstation Player. Player is free software to create and run virtual machines. However, a fee is charged for commercial use. Simply put, it is a simplified implementation of other VMware products, such as Workstation Pro, Server, and ESX Server. Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disks are also supported. In addition, several pre-installed virtual machines can be installed via this page are downloaded, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora. As the small jump in version number suggests, only some minor issues have been fixed in this release.

Resolved Issues

• When you attempt to pass through a USB device that does not follow USB specifications, such as the Broadcom 5880 smart card reader, to a Windows 7 or Windows 10 guest operating system, the device causes the guest CPU usage to increase to the maximum level, making the guest unusable.
• When you connect a USB device to a virtual machine, read from and write to the device, safely eject the device from the guest operating system, and unplug the device from the physical port, Workstation Player might crash.
• When users use a Windows XP guest with VMware Tools 10.0.10, they cannot see host printers that are mapped to the guest with ThinPrint technology.
  This issue is resolved with VMware Tools 10.0.12 when you perform a clean installation. Upgrading from VMware Tools 10.0.10 to 10.0.12 does not resolve the issue.
• When Workstation Pro users select VM > Removable Devices to connect an Active Braille device to the virtual machine, the attempt fails and a “driver error” message appears in the message log. Also, the guest operating system shows no record of the device.
• The vmnat.exe process consumes a new TCP port on the host when users execute Active FTP on the guest. The process does not release the TCP port even when the FTP session is closed.
• When you attempt to map a parallel port to a physical parallel port, you cannot use the parallel port in the virtual machine. The connecting parallel port listed when you select VM > Settings triggers the following error: Cannot open VMparport drivr for LPT1: the system cannot find the file specified…..