Windows 10 guest (on Linux host) *always* loses network connection after dual booting with Windows 10

[antnythr]

My main system environment is running Linux (with a dual boot of Windows 10) and I have a Windows 10 guest VM.

I've found that after I've used the on-metal install of Windows 10 and then get back into Linux after I've finished, when I open the Windows 10 VM, that virtual machine *always* loses it's network connection and I can NEVER get it working again without removing all network devices from within Windows Device Manager, removing all device profiles from the registry [HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles], removing the network device from my VM, and then reinstalling VMWare Player and adding a new network device to the VM (at which point Windows happily detects that a new network connection has been found.

Network connection on the host system always works (both Linux and Windows)

This is clearly a huge pain and I'm wondering a) why this happens, and b) how can I fix the issue when it does come up.

Edit: I'm using VMWare Player 12.5.7

[RDPetruska]

Unless you use the same VM when you are running the Windows 10 host, that makes no sense that anything would change like that.

[wila]

What type of connection is the guest OS using? Bridged or NAT?

If bridged, did you check that the IP addresses from the host do not collide with the IP addresses from the guest?

Have you tried to use:

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

What kind of guest network adapter are you using, is it an intel e1000?

--

Wil

[antnythr]

@RDPetruska

I don't use a VM when I'm within the on-metal Windows installation. Both my Linux and Windows systems are completely isolated from each other (within the BIOS I enable/disable the SATA port that each disk is connected to so I never have a chance of accidentally confusing each disk and wiping the other out). I agree with you that this makes no sense.

@wila

The network card on the host system is an Intel 7260 wireless card

The network card in the VM is listed as Intel 82574L Gigabit Network Connection

The guest OS is using NAT

I can't use ipconfig because Windows shows the port as being disconnected/network cable unplugged. "No operation can be performed on Ethernet0 while it has its media disconnected."

[wila]

Hi,

Confused..

I don't use a VM when I'm within the on-metal Windows installation

Is your Windows VM a raw disk mapping to the actual Windows installed on the physical hardware?

--

Wil

[antnythr]

@wila

Disk 1: SSD - Linux (Host OS) w/ Windows 10 VM (just a regular VM, stored as a VMDK file on an ext4 partition)

Disk 2: HDD - Regular Windows 10 install (No VM installed)

Both systems are completely isolated from each other. I only boot into the HDD with Windows when I need more performance than I can get through the VM.

[antnythr]

Alright so I seem to have discovered the issue, which seems to be that networking wasn't being loaded at boot and I'm not sure what changed recently because this didn't occur before.

If I run (as root): vmware-networks --start

VMWare networking starts up and my VM connection comes back to life.

[wila]

Ok, that starts to make more sense.

But it is still strange that the NAT service breaks if you boot into windows and then boot back into Linux.

For the moment I do not see a connection between the two.

--

Wil

[antnythr]

@wila
I believe it's completely unrelated to Windows now and think the problem is simply to do with rebooting the system and VMWare networking not loading at boot like it used to do (I've noticed that all I have to do is reboot the system and the problem occurs everytime).

This issue didn't occur as of a few days ago

I forgot that I recently installed a new kernel a few days ago (linux-ck) so immediately I figured that this had to be the issue, so I downgraded back to the stock Linux kernel 4.11.7, deleted VMWare and reinstalled it (just so there was no chance of there being any old configuration being around), but the issue persists.

The vmware and vmware-usbarbitrator services load, and vmnet kernel module loads as well.

I'm at a loss now as to why networking isn't starting at boot anymore.