She disabled in Windows Security → Device Security → Core Isolation. Then she ran the VMware cleaner tool to remove orphaned driver files, reinstalled the software, and rebooted.
Priya had installed and uninstalled three different hypervisors over the past two years (VirtualBox, Hyper-V, and VMware). Sometimes, uninstallers leave registry keys or half-deleted drivers behind. vmdrv.sys from an old version might still be present, but incompatible with the new software. Windows would try to load it, fail the version check, and throw the error. vmdrv.sys cannot load
She stared at the screen. Her virtual machine refused to start. Her project deadline was in six hours. And she had no idea what vmdrv.sys was, or why it suddenly mattered. She disabled in Windows Security → Device Security