Start specific virtual machine in VMware in Unity mode on host startup

When I boot up the host computer I'd like the VM to boot up too and enter unity mode. Both OS's are Windows 7. How can I do this?

I found a different solution.

In Unity mode, you can right click a program in the unity start menu, and send a shortcut to the hosts desktop. After I shut down the VM, double-clicking that shortcut started the VM directly into unity mode. I imagine that if you put the shortcut into your startup folder, it would start the VM and that program when you login.

In my case, the startup of the VM took longer than the "vmware-unity-helper.exe" was prepared to allow, so I got a prompt. Once I clicked ok top dismiss the dialog and waited some more, the program started ok.

I am willing to bet that the suspend/resume approach would help with this.

Use Pause/Resume on the virtual machine instead of starting it up and shutting it down. Add a scheduled task to resume the VM on startup.

startup.bat "c:\program files (x86)\VMware\Vmware Workstation\vmrun.exe" -T ws unpause "c:\vm\UnityVM.vmx"