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toolsmythe
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare Player Degrading Network Discover on Windows 7

I've had Win7 Ultimate (64-bit) running on a desktop system for about a year for all or at least most of that time, network discovery has neen a nightmare.

Bring up the browser and click on network and you then have to wiat 45 - 90 seconds for network discovery to list the machines on the network (this is a domain, not a workgroup).

Initially, it was that way *EVERY* time I opened a new browser.  Eventually I found some registry hacks that at east allowed it to persist till the next reboot.

It is the *ONLY* machine on my network exhibiting this behavior; all others discover almost instantly.

If the problem ended there I'd probably just live with it, but this is also true in any program that has a file diaog.

I've been assuming that this is some sort of networking or AD problem.  However, I believe I've now isolated a very unexpected culprit: VMWare Player.

I purchased a new laptop yesterday and upgraded it to Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit.  It had no discovery issues.

I started installing various programs and utilities without incident.

After the VMWare Player install and reboot, the laptop began behaving *EXACTLY* as the desktop.

If I uninstall Player, the problem disappears; if I reinstall it returns.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance -

JP

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toolsmythe
Contributor
Contributor

BTW -

When I go into  Control Panel and get to the Network and Sharing Center, I see two networks: my domain and an "Unidentified Network".  The "Unidentified Network" has an access type of "No Access" and lists two Connections: VMWare Network Adapter VMNet1 andVMWare Network Adapter VMNet8.

I'm guessing that discovery is waiting for the "Unidentified Network" to return a list but because it has no access it is stuck waiting for a time-out.

Assuming I'm making a good guess here, is there any way around this?

JP

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toolsmythe
Contributor
Contributor

Well, for better or for worse, here is my solution:

I disable both of the VMWare adapters and changed the network access on my VMs to NAT.

It resolved my discovery issues and I still have access to the network from the VMs.

If anyone else has a better idea, I'm all ears.

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warriorfullight
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hhmmm.. I don't know if there is a difference on 32-bit and 64-bit in Windows7, but maybe there is. I am currently using Win7 32-bit and have installed VMware player a week ago. So far, I haven't encountered any problem with my network. I am also using both laptop and desktop and both running in 32-bit. You might be getting the problem from its default settings I guess. or maybe sort of compatibility issues. http://imagicon.info/cat/5-59/1.gif

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