I have been running the latest 9.9.1 simulator image without issue on Windows 10, but after upgrading to Windows 11 I got a very unhelpful "failed to start the virtual machine" error message. Looking at the logs wasn't immediately helpful.
So I initially thought it might be due to the enhanced security with core isolation and memory integirt checking. I disabled that, rebooted, and then tried again. Same result.
So after re-enabling the memory integrity checkbox I decided to swing for the fences and upgrade the virtual hardware of the simulator VMs to VMware Workstation 16 (the latest). And voila! It worked.
Not only did it work but I was able to do the same with my second controller node and re-form a healthy cluster.
Now mind you, this is a 2-node simulator that is still in progress so I haven't rejoined AD, created SVMs, et cetera. But it appears to work fine and thought this might be useful to anyone else that wants to use the simulator on Windows 11, assuming you have a recent upgrade on VMware Workstation.
