Vista Fails to Recognize Ethernet Hardware

[BillWray]

I am running 32-bit Vista on an Imac. I was using Boot Camp without any particular issues, and had no problems networking. Now that I am using VMWare Fusion, my session runs OK except that the Ethernet hardware is not recgonzied and it asks for the driver to be loaded. I am not sure why this is coming up, nor where to look for a driver. I would appreciate any advice on troubleshooting this problem. I've been looking around the site without success.

[borisdusek]

I am running 32-bit Vista on an Imac. I was using Boot Camp without any particular issues, and had no problems networking. Now that I am using VMWare Fusion, my session runs OK except that the Ethernet hardware is not recgonzied and it asks for the driver to be loaded. I am not sure why this is coming up, nor where to look for a driver. I would appreciate any advice on troubleshooting this problem. I've been looking around the site without success.

Is the virtual machine a BootCamp one? Or did you freshly install Windows into VMware Fusion? Did you install VMware Tools in the VM? If not, Fusion menubar > Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools.

[BillWray]

The virtual machine is from a Boot Camp partition that works perfectly well on its own. I have installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled VMWare tools. Each time the Ethernet hardware remains unrecognized. I have found another thread that seems to relate to this problem and I will give that a shot althopugh this ought to be a pretty easy thing for VMWare to solve. Thanks.

[BillWray]

I found an answer in a post from Echo Gecko (thanks!) that explained how to insert a statement in the .VMX file (ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"). This appears to have told Vista to use the right driver to install the proper Ethernet driver for the VM.

For more info, find the full posting from Echo Gecko dated 10/7/2008. Finding the .VMX is a little tricky for those of us who are used to Windows. It's tucked away inside a package called "Boot Camp Partition" and the files within it don't appear to be searchable in Finder (perhaps there's a setting of some kind that would allow it - again, I'm still getting used to the Mac way of doing things).

Bill

[borisdusek]

Bill, glad to hear you managed to find the answer, I am putting a link to the post for others - . Next time, you can use the handy "Insert link" function from above the text editor where you edit posts ("2 chain elements" icon), then by going to the "Browse History" tab and selecting the post you mean and clicking Insert. The strange inserted text translates into a nice link when posted. Enjoy your working networking!