This is a small blog to explain the solution to one of the most head-breaking problems I faced while getting my Mac OSX Leopard 1.5.6 to load my Windows 7 beta Bootcamp partition via Vmware Fusion 2.0 and function normally as it would if I booted into at machine switch on.
With very keen inquisitiveness I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta from MSDN and managed to get a valid license key for testing purposes. I own an intel based macbook black (2.4 Ghz) and all my data is on the mac partition. So using bootcamp assistant that comes built in with the OS for installing Windows XP/Vista, I created a dual boot partition for my Windows 7. The installation went smooth and then after installation, I even updated the bootcamp drivers to the 2.1 edition. Every hardware component worked great with Vista drivers provided with bootcamp on the MAC Leopard CD. Now all was fine till I wanted to run bootcamp partition over my Leopard via VMware Fusion. This would be convinient if I wanted to do some on Windows 7 while I was on my Leopard OS.
I mounted bootcamp through VMware fusion and it created all the drivers except the network adapter. I installed the latest VMware tools also but with no luck to get the net working over a NAT-ted connection with my Base Machine.Now what use is a VMware image if net doesn't work on it?
Searched through the net to find that by default VMware software gives Intel Pro/1000 MT adapter to the image. I would like to point out that VMware gives its own hardware driver equivalents when you mount a virtual image irrespective of what the actual hardware on your machine is. For example, my Mac has network adapters by Maxell but Vmware assigns Intel based ethernet adapters to its images. Vmware Tools does the dirty work of forming the interface between the two.
Now my Windows 7 is missing ethernet adapter. The standard VMnet adapters (2) have been created also but no actual physical adapters to receive the net stream if I use NAT setup.After all the tweaking around and trying installation of Intel Pro adapters manually in the image I finally looked through .vmx files for bootcamp partition to figure out that a single line was missing in the configuration .vmx file which told VMware which network adapter to use.
The VMX file is located in a package called "Boot Camp partition".
In OS X, the file is located in
"/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual
Machines/Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/".
Then inside that directory there is a package called "Boot Camp
partition". If you open that package, inside there is a "Boot Camp
partition.vmx" file.
Add the following line to the .VMX file using TextEdit:
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
This is it and everything worked fine on booting up the Virtual machine. Three hours of doing all sorts of tweaking and just one line to get the system to work great. Now I can enjoy the full pleasure of running Windows 7 without aero on VMware Fusion and also as a dual boot partition when I feel like enjoying the aero effects. Hope someone like me finds this blog useful to get their setup going and if you do please do leave comments on this blog.
With very keen inquisitiveness I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta from MSDN and managed to get a valid license key for testing purposes. I own an intel based macbook black (2.4 Ghz) and all my data is on the mac partition. So using bootcamp assistant that comes built in with the OS for installing Windows XP/Vista, I created a dual boot partition for my Windows 7. The installation went smooth and then after installation, I even updated the bootcamp drivers to the 2.1 edition. Every hardware component worked great with Vista drivers provided with bootcamp on the MAC Leopard CD. Now all was fine till I wanted to run bootcamp partition over my Leopard via VMware Fusion. This would be convinient if I wanted to do some on Windows 7 while I was on my Leopard OS.
I mounted bootcamp through VMware fusion and it created all the drivers except the network adapter. I installed the latest VMware tools also but with no luck to get the net working over a NAT-ted connection with my Base Machine.Now what use is a VMware image if net doesn't work on it?
Searched through the net to find that by default VMware software gives Intel Pro/1000 MT adapter to the image. I would like to point out that VMware gives its own hardware driver equivalents when you mount a virtual image irrespective of what the actual hardware on your machine is. For example, my Mac has network adapters by Maxell but Vmware assigns Intel based ethernet adapters to its images. Vmware Tools does the dirty work of forming the interface between the two.
Now my Windows 7 is missing ethernet adapter. The standard VMnet adapters (2) have been created also but no actual physical adapters to receive the net stream if I use NAT setup.After all the tweaking around and trying installation of Intel Pro adapters manually in the image I finally looked through .vmx files for bootcamp partition to figure out that a single line was missing in the configuration .vmx file which told VMware which network adapter to use.
The VMX file is located in a package called "Boot Camp partition".
In OS X, the file is located in
"/Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual
Machines/Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/".
Then inside that directory there is a package called "Boot Camp
partition". If you open that package, inside there is a "Boot Camp
partition.vmx" file.
Add the following line to the .VMX file using TextEdit:
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
This is it and everything worked fine on booting up the Virtual machine. Three hours of doing all sorts of tweaking and just one line to get the system to work great. Now I can enjoy the full pleasure of running Windows 7 without aero on VMware Fusion and also as a dual boot partition when I feel like enjoying the aero effects. Hope someone like me finds this blog useful to get their setup going and if you do please do leave comments on this blog.
