I updated VMware Player to the latest version (3.0) on my home machine last night[1]. Wanted to check out the latest version and get a first hand look at the new features.
I pointed it to my trusty Xubuntu “security” virtual machine and booted up. I ran into a snag pretty quickly though. Seemed that the client couldn’t get an IP address to get on the network.
I’ve seen and fixed this before. VMware Player seems to like to grab my Hamachi “personal VPN” network adapters instead of the local Ethernet one – it will never get an IP from the Hamachi network!
That’s when I hit the next snag: the new version of VMware Player doesn’t include the vmnetcfg network configuration that I’ve always used to fix this in the past. I poked around a bit but it wasn’t there and I didn’t see anything that looked like a replacement.
I ended up fixing this in a bit more of a low-tech fashion. I simply disabled the Hamachi adapter and then booted the VMware client. Client got an IP and I then re-enabled the Hamachi adapter.
Of course, after my low-tech solution I went looking for better options… Turns out I’m not the first one to notice that vmnetcfg went missing. I found discussion and the answer in a forum post:
The vmnetcfg.exe is included in the installer, but won’t be installed.
1. Run the installer with /e option. For example:
VMware-player-3.0.0-197124.exe /e .\extract
All contents will be extracted to “extract” folder.
2. Open “network.cab” and copy vmnetcfg.exe to your installation folder,
typically “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player\”.
Well there you go. Even better.
[1] – Past mentions of VMware Player.
Thanks for the post!
Finding vmnetcfg.exe helped me a lot!
Strange they don’t extract it anymore.
This is very much appreciated, I can’t believe they keep hiding valuable tools like this.
Thank you! I was struggling with this for some time and now that I decided to solve it I found your post. Very Useful.
Wow…this was awesome solution. I am trying to get the bridged networking work for Guest OS(WIN XP) and read so much on google… everyone pointed to keep checking automatic bridging as a problem but no one tell a word about how to get there. Without this I would have banged my head with wall…lol Thanks so much for the great and very well explained solution..i wonder why VMware freeks hide this at first place…huh
I think that going to the Himachi adapter properties and turning VMWare Bridge Protocol off would also fix the problem.
You know? That’s likely a great alternative — and certainly simpler as well. Thanks!
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Thank you! this is a major problem with Player 3.0
Thank you for posting this info!
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for your effort and insight. I thought I would point out that the newest player, released 5/25/2010, now installs the whole network.cab. I was running into a similar problem with the 3.0.1 version and found that by updating my player to 3.1 and using NAT, I got a physcial connection without any muss.
I wanted to point out that I was not able to get bridged mode to work for the new player but the NAT, using the host’s network address, works great.
Thanks bruce! I’m glad to hear that we don’t have to go through such hoops to get the network stuff back.
If you use vmnetcfg.exe to update NAT IP address then it may not configure the gateway address correctly. This can be fixed by editing C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\vmnetnat.conf using your favorite text editor and then rebooting.
Thank you for posting this!
Why on earth did they not include this tool in the first place is beyond me.
Thank you for the tip!
OMG THANK YOU CHRIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve been looking for several days now!
In VMware 2.x it was so easy… VM is really shooting themselves in the foot with this Player “non-sense”. We’re running a large cluster of ESX at work and i sold it using the free desktop versions.
Don’t look now but M$ is coming up quick VM…. not is not the time to get greedy.
Regarding Bruce’s comments, I’ve got the latest Player download installed on Windows 7 x64 and it definitely didn’t install vmnetcfg.exe. This post was a lifesaver, thanks.
Now if only Sharepoint 2010 wasn’t such an astonishing resource hog I might be able to install a dev VM. It’s not looking good for me today though…
thanks for this very useful information!!! It is so helpful for me !!!
@Julian – I feel you on SP 2010! Thanks for this post btw. I am astonished by the nonsense of VMware to not include this by default.
Great Solution, thanks
Thanks – this was a great tip, helped me immensely.
Great man! Thanks for your post.
Thank you so much. Using this tool, I have finally been able to get NAT working in VMWare Player with Windows 7 host using this tool by following instructions here: http://florianlr.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/5/
thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
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Thanks soooooooooooooo much!!!!!!! This is exactly what I needed
it was really helpful… thanks lot!!
Thank you very much! This is much easier than manually editing the .conf files and changing registry entries. I used VMWare Server before and missed the network config program now. I need it because I MUST use specific networks for my clients (dependencies in the installed software).
Oh, by the way: I’m using VMWare Player 3.1.4 !!!! The program still is not installed automatically!
And after all of this time it still isn’t fixed. Awesome info.
Why are they being so stubborn. Fairly simply fix.
Thank you. Fixed my problem.
Been looking for this solution for hours, thx!
VMwarePlayer 4.0.1 again omits the vmnetcfg.exe
Thanx again for the solution
VMwarePlayer 4.0.2 again doesn’t extrace the vmnetcfg.exe. That does not make sense. They extract everything in the “network.cab” except vmnetcfg.exe.
This post helps me. Thank you.