More on VMware Server 2 and Network Adapters

After posting my last blog yesterday, another problem presented itself. While all the systems in our lab are essentially identical, some other factor caused problems on a number of the dual-boot installations in VMware. In the process of correcting the problem with Vista and it's network adapter, the emulated Intel adapter was not detected by XP. The student who was having the problem attempted to fix it by adding the line:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "vlance"

in addition to the line:

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

However, the two commands conflict with one another. Eventually, I realized the solution was to add a second network adapter, ethernet1. By doing this each operating system recognizes one of the two NICs, the one that is compatible with the operating system. When completed, the segment of the .vmx configuration file dealing with the network adapters was as follows:

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.features = "1"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet0.networkName = "Bridged"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet1.present = "TRUE"
ethernet1.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
ethernet1.virtualDev = "vlance"
ethernet1.features = "1"
ethernet1.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet1.networkName = "Bridged"
ethernet1.addressType = "generated"

I only tried this with two adapters, but presumably this could be done for all 3 available virtual adapters so that any operating system with a supported adapter would detect 1 of the 3 possible network adapters.