VMWare Guest Won't Connect to Internet / Wireless

are you using ESXi or VMware Workstation ?

vmware workstation

Did you try NAT?

I did. When I the host is wired, both NAT and BRIDGED appear to work. When wireless, neither one does the trick.

Go into the Virtual network editor and in there you can see which adapter vmware workstation is using for nat and bridge mode and adjust it there

Also, please take a look at this article that talks about adding wireless LAN service to Server 2008.

http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/445-how-to-enable-wireless-in-windows-server-2008/

I wonder if that has been an issue all along. ... Thinkpads_User

By wireless, you mean 802.11b/g/n, right? Is your wired router and wireless router the same device? Do both connections give you an IP address on the same subnet? I am wondering what is different about the wireless connection - is it an issue with the network or an issue with the adapter on the host machine.

When you bridge to the wireless adapter, do you get an IP address at all on the guest?

Go into the virtual network editor and set vmnet0 to be bridged specifically to your wired adapter (instead of automatic)

Next pick an unused vmnet adapter, say vmnet2, and set that to be bridged specifically to your wireless adapter.

On your virtual machine edit the settings and for network choose custom and point to vmnet2.

Sorry, we've been without power for over 24 hours now and have been unable to test any of these suggestions.

I am unsure, however, how to open the Virtual Network Editor ... I don't know how to get to that.

Also, Ive attached some screenshots of ipconfig results from both host and guest that may help you resolve my problem
VMWare-Internet-connect-Problem.docx

Try disabling the Hamachi network adapter.

I think it might be NATing or auto-bridging to that.

If that fixes it, in VMware workstation, go to edit -> Virtual Network Editor ->
VMnet0 should be the bridged network, change it from automatic to your wireless network adapter. Or maybe even better, try clicking "automatic settings" and see if you can remove the Hamachi adapter.

Then change the VM network settings to bridged.

In addition, did you try my link to enable wireless in Server 2008 itself? This is a server setting and not a VMware setting. .... Thinkpads_User

I believe that VMware Workstation will pretty much always NAT to the wired adapter (or wherever the auto bridging takes it).

The only sure way to make the guest use the wireless adapter is to do as I suggested and take an unused vmnet (I recommended vmnet2) and force it to bridge to the wireless adapter while making vmnet0 always bridge to the wired adapter. That autobridging is the most confusing thing vmware could have done for their hosted products.

To find the virtual network editor, open the start menu and go to vmware - you should have an icon to launch it from there. In Workstation 7.x you can also get to it from the "edit" menu option.

I just disabled Hamachi and get same result (see attached screenshots). Also, I did enable wireless in Server 2008 as suggested. VMWare-Internet-connect-Problem.docx VMWare-Internet-connect-Problem.docx

For my own VMware Workstation and a dozen guests (but none server), the guests will connect to the internet using NAT or Bridged networking as supplied by VMware. I don't need custom adapters. But my guests are non-server and cbridgman's guests are all server so far as I know.

... Thinkpads_User

Okay, here is what I did. Is this correct? I haven't tried it yet.

You are correct thinkpads. My guests are server .... either server 2003 or server 2008. the one i'm having problems with right now is server 2008

Go into Virtual network editor.  See pic1.

Then pick the wireless nic for "bridged to".  See pic2
pic1.JPG
pic2.JPG

OK, so now you want to select VMnet2 in the Virtual Machine settings (where you selected NAT/Bridged originally) but no other adapter - just VMnet 2 and then test.

It might be worthwhile to restart your machine first to ensure VMware has got the new adapter.

... Thinkpads_User

That looks good on the network setup, now change the guest (in edit settings) to be custom network and select vmnet2.

You don't need to install the Wireless LAN on a 2008 VM, because no matter how the vm is ultimately getting to the network, it looks like a wired lan to the guest.

In my experience it always gets the new adapter right away. You can look in the network adapters setting on the host and see if it shows up. But a restart never seems to actually hurt Windows :)

Okay, here is what I did. I'm restarting the VM now. I'll let you know if this helped.

That made things worse

Wow are those from the guest or from the host? If from the guest, is the host connected Wirelessly?

Open the vmnet2 adapter on the host and make sure the vmware bridging protocol is installed.

Those are from the guest. And yes, the host is connected wirelessly. that's how I'm talking to you.

How do I open the vmnet2 adapter? ... sorry, i'm a bit of a rookie with network stuff.

Are you on XP? Win7?

I know this works because I have done it! Albeit not for a while.

http://pubs.vmware.com/ws7_ace26/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm?context=ws_user&file=ws_net_configurations_bridged.html

"Bridged networking configures your virtual machine as a unique identity on the network, separate from and unrelated to its host. It makes the virtual machine visible to other computers on the network, and they can communicate directly with the virtual machine. Bridged networking works with both wired and wireless physical host network cards."

Take a look at that article, in particular the part where it talks about "Replicate physical network connection state" and the IP requirements.

@cbridgman  - We all have been through a lot of testing with you. I see up top you are using Windows 7 64-bit for a host (same as me - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit).

Another consideration (not completely off the wall) is to try a different wireless card. I had two different wireless NIC's in my retired T41 Thinkpad and two different wireless NIC's in my current T61p Thinkpad in order to get the reliability and signal quality I need for top performance overall. So it is a consideration, but one I have lived through. ... Thinkpads_User

I have a USB wireless adapter that I will try tomorrow to see if that changes anything and let you know.

Thanks for everyone's help on this in the past. I've done just about everything I can think of and everything you have suggested and am still having problems, albeit, slightly different ones. Using 2 network adapters (NAT and Host-only) on the Virtual Machine, I can now ping the host from the guest and vice-versa. I can even ping google.com and yahoo.com from the guest. The problem that I am having now is that I can't open any sites in IE on the guest machine. When I try, I get the "Internet Explorer cannot display the web page" message. I can open local sites ... the guest is running an appserver (websphere) and I can open the websphere console in IE with HTTP://localhost:9060/console. I just can't browse outside.

I have tried every combination of network adapter settings and each presents slightly different results and problems. When I tried using a Bridged connection only, for example, I was then able to browse the internet freely but had no connectivity to my host machine.

Please see attached file for more information.

Any additional help will be greatly appreciated.

And thanks for hanging in there with me on this. I'm just not very strong when it comes to networking and some of the terminology goes over my head. VM-Connect-Problems.docx

I'm downloading the newer version now. Hopefully, that will solve some of these problems. Once I've upgraded, I'll let you know.

Happy Days! Version 7 of Workstation did the trick. I can browse the internet, I can see my host and my host can see my guest, and everything else appears to be working. I've been struggling with this for months. Thank you for your help.

That's the simplest solution yet.

Thanks to all who helped with this