I've noticed if you have a 2.5 instance and a 4.x instance in your environment, since not all column choices are available in 2.5, this confuses the client. Is that the case in your environment?
Nope, pure v4.1 vCenter and associated client - especially the install I did today on a brand new laptop.
Anyone? This can kill your client when you have a few custom columns and hundreds of VMs. If they can't get the column preferences to stick, can we at least have an option to select more than one column at once to remove. When I right-click the colums to remove them, I have to repeat the process for every column I want to hide. Can someone add this to the feature request? I have seen at least 5 threads in these communities describing people having the same problem.
Same problem here. Very annoying.
Is there any response or fix for this? This is extremely annoying to change multiple times a day! Giving me carpul tunnel. I will have to write a vb script to update the registry manually.
I think I remember a KB where it said it was a bug...found it
You can export column settings from registry, saves you from writing the vBScript.
Yes, I noticed that KB in the weekly digest. I have tried it out but it does not work for vCenter 4.0U2 and probably earlier versions. I guess I will have to wait until we upgrade to 4.1.
We use
VCenter 4.1.0
BUILD 345043
and this error is still there. The KB article doesn´t work.
This is such a crap if you have to change these settings everytime... same as this crap with the language which is never completely right. Sometimes 90 % english 10 % german...sometimes 50 / 50.
Our users and we also are really sad vmware change this... this is just worse and not an improvement.
Bumping this old post to add that I;m seeing the same behavior in VCenter 5.0.0. I noticed when I changed the registry key to display the additional columns, as soon as I change to a view that uses that registry key, it reverts to the default settings.
I'm using VMware vSphere Client 5.5.0 build 2417603, and I'm having the same issue - changes I made to the columns view in the client aren't preserved.
VMware described this issue in kb 1030614 (link). It was also discussed here in other threads.
The suggested solution in the kb is to modify the relevant registry key. However, it's working only if the user implements the registry modification when the vSphere Client is running, and then change the view in the client between some other tab and the required tab in order to see the change.
For example, if the user wants to modify the "Virtual Machines" tab, he needs to modify the VMHeaderColumnsProp data as explained in the kb, and while the client is running, and then he needs to go back to the client and switch to some other tab and go back to the "Virtual Machines" tab to see the change.
Implementing the registry change while the client isn't running won't help since when it'll load it'll revert the changes that were made.
In addition, setting this key with no permissions so he won't be modified won't help since the client needs to modify it while it's running.
A good practice will be running the client via a batch file and include a timeout of a few seconds, after which the registry modification will take place.
Here is an example for the relevant commands:
start /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher" VpxClient.exe
timeout 10 /nobreak >nul
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware\VMware Infrastructure Client\Preferences\UI" /v VMHeaderColumnsProp /t REG_SZ /d "0-136,25-437,19-87,22-240,1-91,2-81,20-103,21-110,9-173,10-85,3-158,4-100,5-100,6-95,7-95,8-95,11-0,12-0,13-0,14-0,15-0,16-0,17-0,18-0,23-0,24-0,26-110,27-0,28-0,29-109,30-84,31-97,32-99,33-77,34-56,35-72" /f >nul
Does anyone know about another permanent solution?
This problem has bugged me for years. It would be so easy for VMware to fix. Just update the registry entry at shutdown instead of startup. But because it's the thick client, they're not going to do it. My theory is that it's VMware implicitly telling their remaining thick client addicts to get with the program and start using that inferior web client.