Vmware Workstation Pro 17.5.2.23775571 | -lifetim...

> Welcome, Arjun. I have been here since the first snapshot.

He installed the OS, then took a snapshot: “Base_2025.”

He felt a chill. Not from the room — from the screen. He opened the VM’s .vmx file in a text editor. At the very bottom, beyond the usual parameters, was a new line: VMware Workstation Pro 17.5.2.23775571 -Lifetim...

2025-04-09T23:14:22.113Z| vmx| Snapshot "Base_2025" retains state. 2025-04-09T23:14:22.114Z| vmx| Guest time delta: +604800 seconds. 2025-04-09T23:14:22.115Z| vmx| Lifetime snapshot extension active. Preserving memory pages across reboots. That wasn’t normal. Snapshots didn’t preserve time drift. They didn’t preserve anything across a full power cycle except disk state.

Source: VMware Workstation — Event ID: 23775571 — "Snapshot retained. Lifetime acknowledged." > Welcome, Arjun

He never installed 17.5.2.23775571 again.

The field accepted it. No error. VMware Workstation Pro didn’t complain — it just hummed, the fans on his Dell spinning up once, then quieting. Not from the room — from the screen

He spun up a new VM: Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, stripped down to 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM. Nothing special. But before booting, he clicked the Advanced tab and typed a strange boot parameter he’d found in a decade-old forum post:

He’d close the laptop and pretend he didn’t see it.