vmplayer (vista) doesn't see host's network

Question

I have a windows Vista host with vmware player and a guest (also with Vista).

Unfortunatly, the guestr cannot see any network. Since these are my first steps with VM Player, I don't know which settings I should be looking at, let alone which settings there even are.

If I go to the menu on the player, and then chosse Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Network Adapter, I have selected the radio button "Bridged: Connected directly to the physical network" and the tick box "Replicate physical network connection state" is ticked. This seems to make most sense to me. But I was unsucessful with the other options too.

I'd be grateful for any pointer to helping me on this problem.

Answer 1

The first step I would try is to choose NAT / Shared networking as this should work in mose environments without problems.

Bridged is by far the best, but it treats the virtual machine as a physical computer, meaning you have to assign an IP and network options, unless DHCP is set up.

If however you cannot get shared to work, the only real thing I can suggest is to try a repair installing in case the VMware network driver installation failed or did not bind to your real network adapter correctly.

You may also have luck by looking in Computer Management > Services and Applications > Services and make sure that the VMware networking driver is set to automatic, or if you changed it, simply make sure it is enabled/running. However, I am not entirely sure this will work as the services look like they only apply to the shared mode, and I doubt these settings would have changed.