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rharford
Contributor
Contributor

Internet access via guest os Windows Server 2008 R2

The network adapter setting of NAT has worked great for years with Windows Server 2003 VMs, that is I am able to connect via IE Explorer to the Inteirnet.

But NAT is not working for a newly  created Windows Server 2008 R2 VM.  Nor can I tweak the network adapter setting to anything else to get it to work.

Any ideas?  Thanks.

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rajeshkongu
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

Do you have any dhcp enabled router to connect internet.

Check windows 2008 R2 ipaddress and host os vmnet8's ip address (both are in same network )because vmnet 8 is responsable for nat.

both are in same network it must work.  check windows firewall as well some times it blocks dhcp request.

Regards,

Karthick

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rharford
Contributor
Contributor

Karthick

Thanks for the reply.  One point I'll make again is that VM Workstation with WS 2003 was automagic for me, install, select NAT, connect to the Internet.  WS 2008 R2 apparently is a different story.  So I'll try to answer the questions below, but my network experience is limited.

Do you have any dhcp enabled router to connect internet.  The host OS can connect (Windows 7 Enterprise).  The Guest OS (WS 2008 R2) does not have dhcp enabled.  Should it?  When I tried to start enabling it, it started complaining that I first hadn't assigned a static ip address.

Check windows 2008 R2 ipaddress and host os vmnet8's ip address (both are in same network )because vmnet 8 is responsable for nat.  Answer -> when I type ipconfig /all in a WS 2008 R2 box, I do not get ANY ip address.  All that ipconfig /all returns is:

host name

Primary Dns Suffix (which is blank)

IP Routing Enabled:  No

WINS Proxy Enabled:  No

both are in same network it must work.  check windows firewall as well some times it blocks dhcp request.  Answer -> I disabled windows firewall, and rebooted as well, no effect, still cannot access Internet from guest OS.

Bob

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rajeshkongu
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi ,

Are you find any vmware virtual adapter vmnet8. if there is no vmware virtual adapter vmnet8  then it won't work. in ipconfig /all it should display the 2 vmware virutual adapter. if it not displayed go to vmware workstation edit and select vmnetwork editor and give restore default. It will work.

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rharford
Contributor
Contributor

It appears that the guest OS of Windows Server 2008 R2 is having trouble recognizing a network adapter.  On my Windows 2003 guest OS's, under Network Adapter in the control panel/device manager I see:  VMWare Accelerated AMD PCINet Adapter.

On my Windows Server 2008 R2 guest OS, all I see is Network Adapter with a yellow/exclamation mark next to it.

So the issue in my mind then is how to get the VMWare Accelerated AMD PCINet Adapter driver installed

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

How did you create the guest? The default network adapter for Windows 2008 R2 is the E1000 adapter.

With the VM powered off and the VM's tab in the Workstation GUI closed, edit the VM's .vmx file and add the following line:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

If the "ethernet0.virtualDev" entry already exists, just change the value.

André

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rharford
Contributor
Contributor

Andre,

Thanks for the response, and my  earliers posts did not make any sense.  The reason being I opened up a purchased support incident with VMware, and I thought you were responding to that.

In any event, I did modify the VMs config file per your suggestion and it did then result in a network adapter showing up  in the VMs device manager.  But still no luck with Internet connectivity.  I also tried "vmxnet" as a value, and still no luck.  I also tried the "restore default" option, no luck.

Hopefully the support incident result will have success.  I'll post the results.

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rharford
Contributor
Contributor

The fundamental problem was that the OS Version that I selected to install was not the OS Version that I actually installed.

So under VM -> Settings -> Options tab and the Version drop down box showed Windows XP.  The OS that actually installed was WS 2008 R2.  Once I had that in sync, I could connect to the Internet from the guest OS using the NAT setting.

But I was still getting all kinds of IE script errors.  Once I then built the OS using WS 2008 R2 SP1 and made sure that I selected the correct Version during the set up, I have not had connectivity problems.

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