Virtualization software requires deep kernel-level access to your processor and memory. Modern antivirus suites, particularly those with "Ransomware Protection" or "Controlled Folder Access," may view a hypervisor trying to mount a large binary file (your virtual disk) as suspicious behavior and block the I/O request.
On macOS, a failed System Extension update can leave VMware’s kernel extensions unloaded. On Linux, if the vmmon and vmnet kernel modules fail to compile after a kernel update, initialization fails with code 42. vm initialization failed 42