Vista "Unidentified Network" Issue

[defect]

There is an issue with VMware Workstation's network adapters in that they are placed in the 'unidentified network' location which by default is a 'public location'. If any network location in Vista is public then the public location firewall rules apply (currently for me that means non discoverable etc).

The unidentified network location can be manually changed to private but this setting does not persist between host reboots (I believe this is by-design).

I would think that the Vmware adapters should be placed in a different location to prevent this problem but I'm not sure why Vista is identifying (or should I say failing to identify) the adapters. I'm attempted to set the IP addresses manually for both adapters as well as adding a gateway (the same IP) as I've heard this might help in getting identification to work but the settings get forced by (presumably by VMware) each time (strangely enough the forced IPv4 properties for both adapters is blank).

Can someone shed some light on this issue - I'm surprised there aren't any other posts there about this as it's a bit frustratiing (being forced to run in public location mode).

[richv]

Hey WesleyWex...

Do you have a support case number?

I have VMWare support on the phone currently and am running through the issue with them... If I have a case number, we could get the details of your case and escalate from there...

[WesleyWex]

I have it, but I doubt this can help, first I've contacted Microsoft, not VMware, and second, I live in Brasil, so I used the local support.

Anyway, the number is 1062038015.

[simdoc]

Our case number is 1109780851. It is hard to believe, but it appears that they are completely ignorant of this issue--especially if nothing has changed in the 6.5 beta. I run Vista on my system and primarily because of this issue I do not run VMWare. I have a strong need to but this problem is too much to overcome.

[richv]

Hey folks... Concerning the unidentified network issue...

Talked with the VMWare Support team (actually not the entire team )

Anyway, they gave me a solution which seems to have worked it about, at least at a visual level. I'm not sure if this resolves the underlying issues you are running into, give it a try and hopefully it resolves that also.

Here is the deal.

Run regedit ->

HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\

Under here, you will find a list of 0000 to 0017 (at least in my case)

Next, run through the 00xx keys until you find the key that says VMNet with a value of either "\DosDevices\VMnet8" or "\DosDevices\VMnet1" (or whichever VMNet device you are having problems with).

Add the key "*NdisDeviceType" with a DWORD value of 1.

Then disable/enable the VMWare NICs (VMNet 1 and VMNet 8 in my case) and reboot and you should be good.

[spyordie007]

According to the MSDN article (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201634.aspx) setting the NDISDeviceType to 1 sets the device to an Endpoint Mapper, which are ignored when Vista does network identification. In theory this should take care of the problem (I dont have time to test now, but I'm sure others are already hot on it)!

What I dont understand is why they had you do it on ControlSet1 rather than the CurrentControlSet. If anyone notices that it doesnt work under ControlSet1 changing the setting under CurrentControlSet may solve the problem.

I'll probably test this evening & try to report back my findings.

Cheers,

Erik

[itsavmworld]

Regarding defect's original post on May 17, 2007 8:55 PM:

I had a similar situation with a Vista Guest running in NAT on Workstation. The Default Gateway would catch with DHCP and the only way I could get rid of the Unknown Network and be able to join the Internal Domain was to give it a static IP. Using IPv4 I also unchecked the IPv6. Then the Network showed my Internal Domain and the Vista Guest functioned normal. It acted as if it required static.

If anyone's been able to figure this out, please let me know! This behavior seems like a VMware design glitch.

[ejobrien]

No luck for me yet using that NdisDeviceType registry change

What specifically is that supposed to fix? Should that directly allow vista to correctly identify the vmnet's or should it allow vista to remember the self-referencing gateway IP address, which should in turn then allow correct network identification?

My vm networks always include the 0.0.0.0 gateway IP address and I cannot get rid of it. The NAT adapter vmnet8 also includes the gateway IP address set in the VMWare "Manage Virtual Networs" utility program 192.168.8.3, however the 0.0.0.0 seems to take precedence so the network cannot be identified.

Eugene

[ejobrien]

Problem solved

Setting NDISDeviceType did the trick. The first time I tried it though, I missed the "*" at the start.

Thanks heaps Rich,

Eugene

[WesleyWex]

Finally some decent solution... as I can see this is exactly what was missing, something to tell Vista to shut up and ignore the identification process.

I found more information here:

[spyordie007]

Note my response 4 posts back

I havent been able to get this working yet, though admittedly I only tried briefly.

Erik

[spyordie007]

Confirmed working here also, I had also initially missed the "*" at the beginning of the name (thanks for the catch ejobrien)

I'm glad we finally have a good solution for this! Since it was given out by VMWare I'm hoping it's safe to assume that they are now aware of this and will be incorporating it into future builds...

[simdoc]

It works for me too, finally! For those who cannot get it to work, the registry key is actually:

HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\00NN

where NN represents the entry as in the earlier post. Make sure you type the value as *NdisDeviceType (with the asterisk).

If you still cannot get it to work, are you running an x64 or x86 host? I'm running x86 on this system.

[itsavmworld]

I'm glad this Reg Key works for everyone now.

Please note in my earlier post, I meant I "did not" have the Default Gateway on DHCP in this situation.

(Making my correction here).

[richv]

Hey folks... The VMWare team is a aware of the problem. Exactly what they will do with it is another story... MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE * at the beginning of *NdisDeviceType

[Cantoris]

Thank you very much for finding and reporting the solution!

I disabled the NIC, added the DWORD value to Current[/B]ControlSet (and nearly missed the "*" myself) and then re-enabled the NIC. Worked perfectly.

I did though run into another problem with loads of failures to reach websites. The cause was the default gateway on that VM NIC was still set to the IP address of the adapter despite NOT[/B] being visibly set as such in the NIC properties. I fixed it from CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{[I]GUID of my VM NIC[/I]}\ by clearing the contents of the multi-valued string "DefaultGateway".

Hope that tip is of use to others.

Best wishes,

Andrew

[richv]

My initial response to your note Cantoris was a mild expletive that I probably shouldn't type here or my post will get blocked... Been trying to figure out that one ever since the VMWare tech asked me to enter the value... Was actually figuring on whacking my machine (which I tend to do when I can't figure it out or don't want to bother).

Anyway that has been driving me nuts lately... I will give it a try and YES it was quite helpful!

[jefmes]

I'm running Vista x64 and noticed the problem most frequently when having unknowingly rebooted a few days before, I would try to stream some media to my XBox 360 from my PC and it would not work. Each time I would have to go back into the office, change the settings back to a private network, fire it up again and it finally would work. I'm looking forward to it all working seamlessly now! The *Ndis DWORD entry fix seems to have done the trick.

[Roddles]

Hi all

I can confirm that this fix has worked for me on Vista 32 bit and Windows 2008 Server 64 bit.

Well done everyone

Cheers

Rod.

[Cantoris]

Hi,

I have run into a problem with this workaround. Although I am using a separate (ie shared with host only) subnet for VMware I also have IPEnableRouter set in the registry (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters) so that if I were to set the default gateway in the VM, traffic can be routed to my real LAN and onto the Internet. This though doesn't work anymore if I change the NdisType to implement the fix previously described. If I wish to get the routing to work, I have to switch the NdisType back first (and disable/re-enable the NIC).

Best wishes,

Andrew

[simdoc]

I would hope the *NdisDeviceType fix would make it into future releases. It's not in 6.0.4.