VMWare Workstation, cloned Windows guest network fails

[Stackewig]

Hello,

I want to run multiple Windows 10 Guests (on my Windows 10). Those machines are all intended to be equal, therefore I got one machine up and installed all the requirements. This works without any problems, the machine has a network connection.

As soon as I copy (Workstation Player) or clone (Workstation PRO) this machine and try to run both machines the network on both will fail. Even when I power off and run only one of them afterwards there will be no network connectivity as soon as I once started both of them the same time.

I have tried NAT and Bridged network adapter.

Does anyone have experience with this problem?

My current guess is, that the copied machine will receive a new MAC address, but the windows network adapter wont receive this change.

Is there maybe any command to reload the windows network adapter and "recheck" the MAC address?

Best Regards

[RDPetruska · Accepted solution]

Have you run sysprep (or whatever the current equivalent is for Windows 10)?  If you look at the vmx file for each guest after it's been powered on, the MAC address should have changed (unless you answered "I moved it").  But all the resource names for every windows entity are the same, and often Windows machines don't play well if there are conflicting resource names on the network at the same time.

[Stackewig]

Thanks this looks very promising, I didnt knew this tool existed.

I will try that and report back.