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3 Replies Last post: Nov 12, 2008 1:05 AM by DaveDallard  

Vmnat service crashes (Wks 6.04 for Windows) posted: Jul 17, 2008 10:03 AM

Click to view pavel-a's profile Enthusiast
pavel-a
47 posts since
Feb 9, 2006

VMNAT service crashes once in 2-3 days on my Workstation v.6.04.

Guest and host are XP SP3.

A popup appears: "Vmnat service failed" and a record is logged in the Windows eventlog.


The network option is (obviously) NAT; host is connected to DSL router (PPPoE) over a GB ethernet.

Most of the time everything works fine.

Usually the crash happens when guest runs emule for a long time :))

After vmnat crashes, the network connectivity in the guest is lost. The host stays connected.
Any workaround, or update for Vmnat is available?

Regards,

  • PA


Tags: workstation_6.0.4, vmnat, networking_problem, nat

Re: Vmnat service crashes (Wks 6.04 for Windows)

1. Jul 17, 2008 10:37 AM in response to: pavel-a
Click to view Peter_vm's profile Guru User Moderators
Peter_vm
9,058 posts since
Feb 1, 2006
If you want band-aid solution, create a script that checks if nat service crashed and restart it.
It might be even possible using automatic MS Service Recovery tab features, but I don't know how it crashes.

Re: Vmnat service crashes (Wks 6.04 for Windows)

2. Jul 17, 2008 4:06 PM in response to: pavel-a
Click to view continuum's profile Guru vExpert
continuum
13,959 posts since
Dec 18, 2003

Plan B:

do not use vmnat-service at all - instead of running a service on the host you can also run a FreeBSD-VM which runs a NAT-service.
I am very satisfied with monowall - thats a only 6Mb little VM which uses about 64 Mb of RAM and runs NAT so much better than any Windows-service can do

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters: http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html
VMware-liveCD: http://sanbarrow.com/moa.html

Re: Vmnat service crashes (Wks 6.04 for Windows)

3. Nov 12, 2008 1:05 AM in response to: pavel-a
Click to view DaveDallard's profile Lurker
DaveDallard
1 posts since
Nov 12, 2008

I have this exact same problem, except I'm running WMWare Server 2.0 in a production environment - very inconvenient when it goes wrong.

I've done the band-aid solution but it's still not ideal - especially when I have customers paying for a web and email hosting service that keeps stopping at random intervals!

Sometimes - the VMnat service crashes every couple of hours... It's daft really - considering it's supposed to be a robust product. I would use bridged mode networking - however there are MAC address restrictions on the network my server is connected to (not my network!) and they shut my LAN port down if my machine starts using other MAC addresses.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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