Enable Automatic Start Up for Guest OS on VMware ESX 3.5
This one had me tearing my hair out. We needed to enable auto startup on some of our Virtual Machines on the VMware ESX server, but I couldn’t for the life of me work out how. After a stupid amount of Googling around, turning up nothing, I actually RTFM! Page 177-178 had the answers 
Here’s how to do it:
Launch the Virtual Infrastructure Client. If you don’t have it, just http:// to your VMware ESX host and grab it from the front page.
Go to the Configuration tab of your ESX Server, then click on Virtual Machine Startup/Shutdown.
By default (I’m pretty sure) automatic startup is disabled. To enable it, click on “Properties…” on the far upper right of the window.
You’ll now see this window:
Check/Tick “Allow virtual machines to start and stop automatically with the system”.
Now, this is the bit where I nearly cried…
You know you want to “enable” your Guest OSes to automatically boot, but how? I tried clicking and dragging, right clicking for a context menu to enable “Automatic start up” and gave up.
Turns out, you need to click on the Guest OS you’d like to enable, and then click “Move Up” until it sits underneath the “Automatic startup” title. Argh!
I really hope this helps someone out! 
artfakt said,
31 July, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Yes, it helps a lot, thx ; )
Mark Iwaszko said,
10 August, 2008 at 6:11 pm
This helped a lot as I couldn’t find the relatively hidden properties button. Thanks again.
Stewart Baillie said,
14 August, 2008 at 7:46 am
You really have to wonder who vets this UI design! Come on VMware.
Thanks, I wasn’t going to work that one out through intuition.
David Francis said,
19 August, 2008 at 9:31 am
Thank you… this would have cost me a lot of hair pulling!
What a strange GUI.
Johnny Ulriksen said,
19 August, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Yes, it helps a lot, thanks from Johnny
Gabrielli said,
11 September, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Thank you….
Thanks for taking the time to make this page.
This was a very non intuitive way of making a gui.
Erez said,
19 September, 2008 at 5:28 am
For the last week I have tried again and again to find the way how to move things from disabled to enabled with no success. No help No google. Till I found you. Thank You.
Mike said,
6 October, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Thanks for taking the time.
I never would have figured this out (I’m not even sure where our “FM” is).
Monette said,
9 October, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Thanks, it helps a lot!
Brett said,
23 October, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Haha! Thank you for the pics. I spent half an hour looking for the damn “properties” button. Guess I am getting blind in my old age. The “on the far upper right of the window” really came in handy! Thank you!
Richard said,
26 October, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Very many thanks for that. VMware Server has the same window. The help in VMware Server *does* actually tell you to do the Move Up thing, but it’s lost in the noise. The bad news is that it also gives you this false explanation for why you aren’t getting anywhere:
‘Note To allow virtual machines to be started and shut down on a Windows host system, you must also select Allow virtual machines to start and stop automatically with the system during the installation of VMware Server.’ That’s untrue. You can do it at any time.
Very good interface in general, though.
Pen said,
7 November, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Intuitive. NOT!
Thanks VERY much for this.
Dorchy said,
20 November, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Wow! Thanks for ending the hours of fruitless google!
Ed P said,
2 December, 2008 at 2:49 pm
U are a gawd for putting this up..
BUT, my next question is how does this work with vmotion as the vitual machines seem to be tied to a host when u do the settings.
Phil Wiffen said,
2 December, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Haha, thanks Ed
You raise a good question, but as I don’t have VMotion enabled, I’m not sure…
Andy said,
20 January, 2009 at 2:24 am
haha i struggled fo 10 minutes not realising this – thank you very much!
Oliver said,
28 February, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I was trying to figure this out using VMWare Server 2.0. Thanks
Roberto said,
27 March, 2009 at 11:42 am
I have lost a big part of my hair too before reading you post!!!
Thank you very much!!!
Gus said,
6 April, 2009 at 2:38 pm
This is amazing. Who designs these programs. I have been searching for an answer to this for ages now. Cannot believe that they would put such a crazy interface.
Thanks a lot for the tip. I have been booting up my virtual machines manually every time.
Crazy.
wangdong said,
8 May, 2009 at 2:01 am
Thanks VERY much for this.
Alex said,
17 June, 2009 at 2:49 pm
is it possible to do that from command line?
thanks
Phil Wiffen said,
18 June, 2009 at 9:21 am
I dunno Alex, what does the manual say?
Travis said,
22 July, 2009 at 2:06 am
Just like you, I was pulling my hair out. And just like everyone else who posted….THANK YOU!
anon said,
23 July, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I had the exact same problems, thanks SO much for the instructions.
grn.rabbit said,
5 August, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Thanks a lot for the post
VMware created totally brain damaging interface to manage it.. I’ve been looking a way to enable it for at least 2 hours
Paul Friedman said,
10 August, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Thanks for this post! This dialog box was killing me for 30mins until I found your posting. Entirely unintuitive.
Kevin Murphy said,
11 August, 2009 at 5:20 pm
THANK YOU. I searched google for nearly an hour before finally finding this. I couldn’t find this info on the VMWare community site either (also there search engine is rubbish!!) If you are going to use your VM’s in any sort of production environment, you definately need to turn this setting on (as I discovered!!!). I don’t normally bother posting thanks either, so it shows how much I appreciate it!!!
Anyway, thanks again.
Phil Wiffen said,
13 August, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Thanks for all the “Thank you” messages guys! Appreciated
Will said,
17 August, 2009 at 2:42 am
Brilliant….. i was about to go crazyyyy .. good work!!!!
Vidar Markussen said,
17 August, 2009 at 8:49 am
Thank you!
This was a nice tutorial. I’ve searched for hours, and only found how to do this with a text editor, and only when the guests where shutdown.
This is WAAAY slicker. Good job Phil, love it.
Best regards
Vidar
Lasse said,
29 September, 2009 at 11:50 am
Thnx… Helped a LOT!!!!
/Lasse
Grateful said,
12 October, 2009 at 4:54 pm
You’re a lifesaver!!!
Maurice said,
24 October, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Thanks! Could find it at first….
Art said,
22 November, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Unbelievable! I just spent 2 hours navigating around the console… definitely not intuitive. Thx for the tip!
Adelaide Dave said,
23 November, 2009 at 6:35 am
So obvious – not. Thanks heaps
Aqid said,
16 December, 2009 at 2:35 am
Lol I enabled automatic startup like at the 2nd picture, but I couldnt find why it wouldnt work. Spent atleast 15 minutes at the interface trying to figure out lol. Thanks!
NixHR said,
19 December, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Also did a lot of googling, luckily I found this post
Hedley Phillips said,
29 December, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Thank you!
Who would have thought of looking over there for the properties link. VMWare, you write clever software but your GUI is awful.
suresh said,
6 January, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Thanks, drove us crazy trying to get the VM from “disabled” to “enabled”.
Jayesh said,
8 January, 2010 at 2:58 am
Is there any way to enable only startup option but not shutdown?
Fred said,
1 February, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Well, I guess it is not just me….
Tried many things before finally giving up and searching the net.
Very happy to have found this post.