Is there any way to run VMware Player from a flash drive without admin rights?

Question

I was wondering if there is any way that I could install VMware Player on my flash drive, and run it from my flash drive without needing admin rights. I could use admin rights when installing it on my flash drive, but when I use it on another computer I would not have admin rights. Is there any way that I can do this? Thank you for your help and time!

Solution

No, this is not possible. In order to provide the guest with virtualized hardware with reasonable performance, VMWare requires access to special hardware features to support virtualization, and these are reserved for admin users.

To quote from Is it possible to create Portable VM? on SO:

Can't be done due to Hardware assisted virtualization. Basically you need admin rights in order to access all the nifty features that make modern, hardware assisted virtualization so fast.

Note that is is possible to virtualize an OS without admin rights - after all, an OS is just a special piece of software, and you can emulate everything it needs. However, without access to the assistance modern hardware provides for virtualization, the virtualized OS will be very slow, probably too slow to use.

In the extreme case, everything is emulated in software, even every single CPU instruction. This is hideously slow, but allows you to simulate a different CPU and HW architecture - and also does not require admin rights. QEMU and emulators for "classic" platforms like UAE or VICE work like this (although QEMU also supports hardware-assisted virtualization).

Comments

[Austin T French]

vmware already installed on the non-admin machine?