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.
Possibly Related posts:
Loading tweets...
31 comments
4 pings
Ramon says:
January 20, 2010 at 3:35 am (UTC -7 )
Thanks for the post!
Finding vmnetcfg.exe helped me a lot!
Strange they don’t extract it anymore.
Jason says:
February 3, 2010 at 3:36 pm (UTC -7 )
This is very much appreciated, I can’t believe they keep hiding valuable tools like this.
Carlos says:
February 10, 2010 at 12:37 pm (UTC -7 )
Thank you! I was struggling with this for some time and now that I decided to solve it I found your post. Very Useful.
Nits says:
February 17, 2010 at 1:05 am (UTC -7 )
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
RM says:
March 1, 2010 at 1:02 pm (UTC -7 )
I think that going to the Himachi adapter properties and turning VMWare Bridge Protocol off would also fix the problem.
Chris says:
March 6, 2010 at 7:33 am (UTC -7 )
You know? That’s likely a great alternative — and certainly simpler as well. Thanks!
dsanger says:
March 26, 2010 at 11:26 am (UTC -7 )
Thank you! this is a major problem with Player 3.0
wylis says:
May 26, 2010 at 7:18 pm (UTC -7 )
Thank you for posting this info!
kAtAlA says:
June 10, 2010 at 2:38 am (UTC -7 )
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
bruce says:
June 23, 2010 at 5:12 pm (UTC -7 )
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.
Chris says:
June 24, 2010 at 10:13 pm (UTC -7 )
Thanks bruce! I’m glad to hear that we don’t have to go through such hoops to get the network stuff back.
abubasim says:
June 26, 2010 at 1:06 am (UTC -7 )
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.
Dennison Uy says:
June 29, 2010 at 9:51 am (UTC -7 )
Thank you for posting this!
Why on earth did they not include this tool in the first place is beyond me.
Andres says:
July 5, 2010 at 10:07 am (UTC -7 )
Thank you for the tip!
Corey says:
July 5, 2010 at 6:50 pm (UTC -7 )
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.
Julian says:
July 5, 2010 at 8:58 pm (UTC -7 )
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…
cocodonald says:
July 8, 2010 at 8:58 pm (UTC -7 )
thanks for this very useful information!!! It is so helpful for me !!!
Ryan says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:16 pm (UTC -7 )
@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.
Richard Dunne says:
August 5, 2010 at 11:38 am (UTC -7 )
Great Solution, thanks
breed says:
August 15, 2010 at 10:42 pm (UTC -7 )
Thanks – this was a great tip, helped me immensely.
Thawat says:
August 27, 2010 at 2:32 am (UTC -7 )
Great man! Thanks for your post.
nodmonkey says:
October 8, 2010 at 2:45 am (UTC -7 )
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/
ade says:
October 28, 2010 at 8:59 am (UTC -7 )
thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Frank says:
March 15, 2011 at 2:58 am (UTC -7 )
Thanks soooooooooooooo much!!!!!!! This is exactly what I needed
debadatta says:
March 15, 2011 at 6:57 am (UTC -7 )
it was really helpful… thanks lot!!
Wolfgang says:
August 1, 2011 at 6:37 am (UTC -7 )
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).
Wolfgang says:
August 1, 2011 at 6:39 am (UTC -7 )
Oh, by the way: I’m using VMWare Player 3.1.4 !!!! The program still is not installed automatically!
kevin says:
August 13, 2011 at 7:49 pm (UTC -7 )
And after all of this time it still isn’t fixed. Awesome info.
Why are they being so stubborn. Fairly simply fix.
Lapi says:
August 22, 2011 at 3:47 am (UTC -7 )
Thank you. Fixed my problem.
Frederik says:
September 22, 2011 at 3:41 am (UTC -7 )
Been looking for this solution for hours, thx!
bazkar says:
January 17, 2012 at 3:07 am (UTC -7 )
VMwarePlayer 4.0.1 again omits the vmnetcfg.exe
Thanx again for the solution
VMplayer e NAT « Ra.Blog says:
March 5, 2010 at 3:54 am (UTC -7 )
[...] è possibile configurare il nat e il port forrwarding OutOfTheBox. Cercando per la rete ho trovato questo utilissimo post che spiega come risolvere il problema. In pratca l’installazione omette lo strumento di [...]
VMware Player and REALLY Long Startup » Solo Technology says:
March 11, 2010 at 8:55 pm (UTC -7 )
[...] Startup I thought I’d hit most of the potential VMware Player challenges by now (most recently network configuration) but I’ve been wrestling with a new issue for a while now. It was only happening on one [...]
Solved: VMPlayer & Nat update « Ra.Blog says:
March 19, 2010 at 9:55 am (UTC -7 )
[...] Install the Virtual Network Editor coming with VMPlayer (but not installed automatically check this post). Edit the VMnet8 interface and change the subnet to your needs. Mine was 192.168.38.0 Ok and [...]
Tune Up Your PC » Post Topic » Getting DHCP IP in VMPlayer 3.0 says:
October 28, 2010 at 10:59 pm (UTC -7 )
[...] get a DHCP IP…. It surely annoys me enough for me to turn to VirtualBox until I found the blog ( VMware Player 3.0 and Network Configuration ) which states the following: The vmnetcfg.exe is included in the installer, but won’t be [...]