[RSEAMONKEY87]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Not certain about this but I seem to remember that ESXi 7.0.3 had an issue with GPU passthrough. We had some fun with AMD video where setting both audio and video to passthrough ended up sometimes working after a restart and sometime not working. You might want to take a look at VMware vSphere / ESXi 7.0 GA work-around for GPU passthrough issues including disabled-after-reboot bug and UI bug. I think this is where my co-worker found the basis for our workaround.

You're on the right path. It gave me the ideal of messing with display drivers. So it would seem that the latest VMwareTools update is the culprit. The SVGA3D driver is the main issue with the update. If I disable the driver in a normal windows boot calibre will launch. If I remove the device and also ensure to remove the driver and rescan for hardware changes, the default Microsoft driver is installed, and Caliber will launch.
Another option is to enable 3d support in the VM machine settings under the video card section. But this seems to general some virtual memory issues. I found this link when I started digging in the right direction though.
https://enfocus.my.site.com/customer...language=en_US

This article suggests adding an environmental variable to correct a similar issue. But it did not work in my case.

I ended up uninstalling 12.5.0 and downgrading VMware tools to 12.4.5. This corrected the issue on both Win10 and 11 VMs.