When I start up my Linux VM (Xubuntu 14.04 aka Trusty) on VMWare Player (v6.0.3), my Windows host (Windows 7 pro x64) makes an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screen of death.
The fact is that BSOD occurs juste after selecting an entry in my guest's GRUB screen.
How to avoid that?
The problem occurs because somewhere in VMWare drivers, an Interruption Request is made to satisfy guest shared hardware (USB, NAT, ...). The workaround is to uncheck "Connect at power on" checkbox on every device listed in "Virtual Machine Settings > Hardware" menu. You will then be able to boot.
Once the guest is started you can individually connect the pieces of hardware you want.
With my HP laptop, if I add the CD/DVD drive to my Ubuntu VM then this happens every time. So like the doctor says, "Does it hurt when you do that? then don't do it." ;) It'd be nice if VMware Player didn't bomb out for something straightforward like that, but such is life. You can always turn off that hardware before you run the VM.
My general experience as well is that it's better to add/remove hardware to the VM with the VM off. Remember that these are things which you usually wouldn't be able to change with a PC running, so it's not unreasonable for driver authors to assume that what they have on startup will not change.
BTW, don't forget that you'll need to manually delete all the lock files in the VM directory as well. VMware Player does a less-than-perfect job of cleaning up after crashes.
