XP won't run any .exe starting with VM !??!

Freaky.. My VMware stopped working without notice. I uninstalled the
VMplayer and attempted reinstalling, to my shock, I didn't have permission to
install. Following attempts showed no warnings. Tricked the reinstaller by
renaming it to 'player.exe' and it worked. VMWare player still didn't work,
changed the VMplayer.exe to Mplayer.exe and it opened, but subsequent
services it calls (VMdns.exe, VMservices.exe etc) can't be opened. I change
notepad.exe to vmnotepad.exe and it fails. How on earth? Anyone hazard a
guess? Malbytes shows up clean.

 

You are asking about VMWare (just the Player?). You are asking in a
VirtualPC newswgroup. So why are you trying to run VMware Player inside
a virtual machine managed by VirtualPC?

 

OK wrong group.. it's a Windows issue related to Virtualisation and I don't
know where else to start. It's a VMplayer or any other file with VM*.exe on
my real machine. I was hoping that someone might have had a clue as to why
this is occurring or how to stop it. Point me to another group if you know
where.
thanks

 

I am having the same problem. It didn't even occur to me to rename the file.
I tried to reinstall the player and it wouldn't even do that! What a weird
thing.