How to use BIOS instead of UEFI firmware for a VMWare virtual machine

Recent versions of VMWare’s VMPlayer use UEFI firmwares by default if you select a UEFI-compatible operating system during VM creation. There are some cases, however, in which you have to change the VM to a classical BIOS firmware afterwards, for example if you have your operating system installed without UEFI support or if you selected the wrong operating system.

Currently, it seems to be impossible do change the firmware setting in the GUI, therefore you first have to find the .vmx file corresponding to the virtual machine. Usually it is located at ~/vmware/<Name of VM>/<Name of VM>.vmx.

After stopping the VM , open that file in your favourite text editor and look for this line:

firmware = "efi"

Change it to

firmware = "bios"

After that, save the file, restart VMPlayer and start your VM.