Didn't realize I was a part of a "small fraction" of Workstation users.  My Pentium4 CPU is capable of 64bit but I run XP Pro on it. Why would I want to switch to XP Pro 64 bit?  I own Vista Ultimate 32 bit and Vista Ultimate 64 bit but I choose to run XP Pro 32 bit. I think it premature to withdraw support for 32bit when XP Pro is still supported until 2014.

I tried to install Windows 8 Preview last night on Workstation 7 and encounter a HAL initialization failed error. I came here and read that I needed to upgrade to Workstation 8 but then I learned that I cannot do that.

I don't think I'll be purchasing Workstation in the future as I don't appreciate support being pulled out from under me like you have done. I fully expected to be able to run Windows 8 preview, beta on Workstation 7 or be able to upgrade to 8 on 32bit XP Pro to run it.

I have the compatible instruction set.

Intel Pentium 4 processor 670, Hyperthreading, 3.8GHz

But the processor does not support Intel hardware virtualization. Is that needed?

Mele wrote:

 

Didn't realize I was a part of a "small fraction" of Workstation users.  My Pentium4 CPU is capable of 64bit but I run XP Pro on it. Why would I want to switch to XP Pro 64 bit?  I own Vista Ultimate 32 bit and Vista Ultimate 64 bit but I choose to run XP Pro 32 bit. I think it premature to withdraw support for 32bit when XP Pro is still supported until 2014.

We have not dropped support for 32-bit Windows XP hosts.  You can use 32-bit host operating systems (and run 64-bit guests on them!), but we now require that you have a 64-bit VT-capable CPU.

--And that is precisely the problem. ;-)

--The **majority of the world** is still using older hardware that is 32-bit only.  Vmware made a name for itself on such equipment in the early 2000's - for the 1st time, virtualization worked well on standard home PCs without hardware support.

--I was pushing hard in another forum to keep 32-bit-only support for WS for the next few years at least.  It's a little hard to tell your friends that they're now limited to a Certain Version of Player, because Vmware made an arbitrary decision to drop support for their bone-standard CPU too early.

--It's a SOFTWARE VIRTUALIZATION PRODUCT, guys...  It shouldn't REQUIRE hardware support!  That's why I bought WS3 back in the day in the 1st place!  I was getting tired of reinstalling Win98, and decided to run WS on Linux for better stability.  I've been a huge fan ever since.

--For Vmware's sake, I hope you keep supporting WS 7 32-bit upgrades for the next few OS releases on Linux, etc until Microsoft officially drops support for *all* of their 32-bit stuff.  You're not leaving people with a whole lot of alternatives here.

kingneutron wrote:

 

--How about this - Take a poll.  Put it right on the vmware front page.  Hands up if you want to keep 32-bit-only support for Vmware Player (at least) for the next few years ?

 

If we did such a poll, I'd expect that almost all respondents would say yes, "Sure, keep 32-bit hardware support." It'd be very biased toward a vocal minority who do want it (people who don't care would be unlikely to respond).  I also wouldn't expect most people to appreciate the benefits of dropping 32-bit hardware support, so given a choice between "have" and "have-not", most people probably would choose "have".

Our usage data covers a much, much larger sample set than an online poll would.

My understanding (but don't quote me on this) is that Workstation 7 will have an extended EOL since we've dropped 32-bit hardware support (and some other things, such as the old teams implementation).

I'd recommend VMware drop the section on the Workstation 8 "Why Workstation" page titled "Recycle old hardware".

http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/index.html

Dropping support for 32bit this early on makes a mockery of that.

I have one new 64bit machine but I also have two old 32bit machines that I had planned to continue using virtualisation on for a while yet. I probably will continue to use them, but I guess it won't be with VMware.