Install Win8 Consumer Preview 32 bit in VmWare Player 4

Most of the posts I looked at for installing win8 on VmWare mentioned the term "slam dunk". Not so much for me.

Here's the resource that eventually helped me out, even though it is for VmWare Workstation and the dev preview instead:

http://www.mywindowsclub.com/resources/5081-Install-Windows-VMWare-Workstation.aspx

I'll try to detail where I went wrong, and what the keys were to getting back on track. First let me note that I believe you need to upgrade to at least Player 4 for this to work.

Wrong:
1. Choosing "Other" as the OS - you can install Windows 8 like that, but you won't get the "tools", which for me meant no networking.

2. So then I chose Win7, but pointed to my ISO in the VM setup. That led to the player running an unattended install file for win7 on top of the win8 setup. That kept failing and looping with an error on the product key. There seem to be indications that "removing" the "floppy" in the hardware portion of the VM setup can help with that, but it didn't help me.

Right:
Choose "Win7 as the OS (with the 32 bit win8). But choose operating system as None/Do later. Then mount the iso as the dvd after the VM fails to boot, and restart the VM. You wind up in setup without the unattended install script, but with win7 VmWare tools, which is exactly what you want.

Good luck, I'm off to play with win8!

VMware Tools now comes with VMware Player

I try to keep the version of VMware player I use to run virtual machines up to date. However it's been a couple of months. Just got the most recent version, and as soon as I went to boot my Windows XP virtual machine, up pops a dialog to install VMware Tools! If you know what VMware Tools is (yes that's "is" rather than "are", it's a product) you know why this is exciting. If you don't you probably shouldn't read this as it will put you to sleep.

VMware Tools is like the option pack for VMware. Sure you can run without it, but you're jones-ing. Here's the best example. You're stuck with Windows default VGA video driver without Tools, meaning really low quality display properties and performance.

Up until recently, and I haven't been able to find an announcement on this on their website, you had to purchase at least VMware workstation to get it. The free VMware Player did not come with it. They must have finally seen that all these other free VM hosts (Microsoft Virtual PC, Virtual Box, etc.) were looking better than VMware because of it.

I had scoured the web trying to find a legal way to use VMware Tools with no luck. This is a total bonus, thank you VMware!

Windows 7 beta and VMWare player - network gotcha

http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/1818-How-to-get-VMWare-Workstation-6.5-Guest-VM-NAT-working-with-a-Windows-7-Build-7000-host.html

http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/1781-Semi-functional-workaround-for-networking-issues-with-VMWare-Workstation-6.5-and-Windows-7.html#comments

I dealt with this issue (WMWare Player networking doesn't work on Windows 7 beta) when the beta first came out. Turns out things haven't gotten any better yet, which frankly I find surprising. The author of these posts does a good job of laying out the alternatives and workarounds. I'm not a fan of ICS. At the moment I do have bridging working, as I am mostly working on a lan. However the gotcha is when you are working remotely using an aircard. You need NAT because you can't bridge to the cell provider. So this is a real problem.