i don’t know why the vmware registration service is not auto-starting on windows boot. the service is set to automatically start, but it just doesn’t. this causes vmware to fail to connect to its local console management screen which prevents me from starting up the virtual machine.
this link has an executable that will start the service up. annoying hack, but it works.
Most likely because the VMware Authorization service takes too long to start (probably because it is trying to take over networking). The best solution seems to create a Scheduled Task to start both.