Solved issue of importing the vHA-5.3.0-build-7325772.ova into Workstation 14 Player

Posted to stop anyone else from going through the frustration I have experienced over the past couple of days, when trying to get the latest vHA 5.3.0 .OVA imported into VMware Workstation 14 Player (prob same issue with Workstation 12.x Player also).

Issue. Importing the .OVA through the WS 14 Player GUI causes the application to lock up/go non-responsive and you have to kill the ovftool.exe process from Windows Task Manager.

Log Files. The ovftool.log logfile in C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Temp\vmware-{username} grows to 100's of MB in seconds and the vmware-ovftool-{random number}.log logfile (in the same directory) has the last line/entry of {yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.xxxZ} | vthread-4| I125: OBJLIB-LIB: Objlib initialized.

Resolution. Run the ovftool.exe from an Admin Command prompt and use the --disableVerification option.

E.g.C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\OVFTool\ovftool --disableVerification "C:\Source\VMware\VMware vHA\vHA v5.3.0\vHA-5.3.0-build-7325772.ova" "C:\Source\VMware\VMware vHA\vHA v5.3.0\VMwareWSPlayer"

Have fun.

Martin