VMware - restart Linux VM without losing everything on it

I have a Linux VM that has frozen completely. It likely happened because I left it idle for too long. I don't have any snapshots and I don't want to have to set it up again due to having a lot of issues getting everything up and running. When I run a Windows VM on it I can restart it and have it reload as a normal computer. If I shut down a Linux, though, it is completely reset and nothing is saved. Is it possible to restart the Linux VM somehow without losing all my data, configurations, installed programs etc.? I am on VMware Workstation 15 Pro. I installed from a Linux ISO the same way I install Windows VM. I did not remove the installation medium from the drive before rebooting, I can't remove it either because it's in use by VMware. If I remove the ISO then the screen is just black after powered on.