I really hope VMware keeps the installer and product documentation around for this particular version v12.5.9 indefinitely, as there is a valid need for this version to still be available and installed. Newer versions of the operating systems are making breaking changes to the system shared libraries that are increasingly incompatible with the VMware proprietary binaries. The VMWare Workstation VMX process was chewing up almost 60 CPU usage once getting into Windows, and the VMs CPU usage was at 100 constantly. A Commercial License can be applied to enable Workstation Player to run Restricted Virtual Machines created by VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro. The BIOS rendered line by line slowly, it took almost 15 seconds to load completely, and the machine itself took almost 8 minutes just to get into Windows. That said, it is getting harder to continue using this old version. VMware Workstation Player (formerly known as Player Pro) is a desktop hypervisor application that delivers local virtualization features and is available for free for personal use. So upgrading VMware is not an option for us, we are stuck on v12.5.9, and that is fine for most personal use anyway. While that is probably not mainstream for VMware's commercial customers, there are some of us still using these old systems for personal use. I know this might not be immediately obvious, but VMware Player v12.5.9 is the last version that works on older processors from before 2011*.
