VMware Workstation 6.5, Vista 64 and Port Forwarding Issues

[MarcSant]

Hello all,

I'm doing a evalution test with this version, and after installed this product my download tool was stop to work as expected.

I'm download as daily basis versions of CentOS, Mandriva, etc. using uTorrent, with no problems at all. My computer is a quad core processor, and the internet access is shared with a 3Com Internet Gateway appliance. I'm running Windows Vista 64 Ultimate.

After Workstation 6.5 was installed, the incoming connections to uTorrent was stopped to work. I've checked the Windows Firewall, 3Com appliance rules, TCP/IP driver version, and almost every program or software that I installed to try to find out what was happend. With no luck.

So, I decided to reinstall the Vista from scratch. Before every step to install the programs that I use (Babylon, Office, Anti-virus, etc) I made a System Restore Point, in the hope to discover what the program causes the uTorrent and Limeware to stop work.

My guesses was the NOD 32 antivirus, because this kind of program in some way intercept the TCP comunication stack.. But, after Nod was installed, the uTorrent works as expected... With no problem in port forwarding...

And, for my surprise, after WMware 6.5 was installed, the uTorrent cannot accept any incoming connection in port 10681 that I was configured on 3Com appliance. Restoring the system to point before the VM 6.5 was installed fixed the problem...

I really don't know How the Vm 6.5 interfere with P2P programs... The Workstation 6.0 work with uTorrent with no problems at all.

So, I don't have any option instead of remove version 6.5 and back to 6.0.5.

Any help would be very appreciated.

Marcelo Santos.

[Lawrence]

Networking is the one area in Vista where MS tried to help casual users and seems to have caused more issues than helped. With that rant aside, are any other Internet applications negatively effected? Does IE still work properly?

The place to look is Vista's Networking center. VMware adds a couple of networks, and Vista tries to place them in Public or Private. Make sure that in adding those networks Vista didn't change your physical NIC in a way you don't want. I've only had to deal with this a few tiems, and I've beat Vista across the head until it did what I wanted, but I haven't read up on the 'right' / efficient way to do it, so I can't help there. Having open incoming Torrent connections is of course a significant security risk. I'd limit that to a VM - not at host (if at all). With that said, the firewall / security setup in Networking at the host may have changeds with the 6.5 install, so I recommend starting there.

[Lawrence]

Different anti-virus, but related WS6.5 Vista networking issue, so just an FYI -

[Scissor]

Since I only use Bridged networking with my Guests, I disabled the two new "VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter"s on my host to fix a similar issue I ran into.