VMware Unidentified Network Issue in Vista and Windows Server 2008 Fix

December 18, 2008 · 10 comments

I use VMware Workstation to run my development virtual machines. I prefer it over Microsoft’s offerings for two main reasons, USB support and high resolution/multi-monitor support inside of virtual machines.

There is however, a very annoying problem when you install VMware on Vista (and Windows Server 2008). When you install VMware it adds a few virtual network adapters. For various reasons, these adapters are listed in the Network Sharing Center as being on an “Unidentified network (Public network)” and all of the features under Sharing and Discovery are turned off .

Here is the best fix I’ve found thanks to a post by richv in the VMware forum:

  1. Run regedit
  2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
  3. Underneath you should see several keys labeled 0000, 0001, 0002 etc… Look through these and find the VMware adapters. They will probably be near the end of the list if you just installed VMware.
  4. For each of the VWware adapters, add a new DWORD value named “*NdisDeviceType” and set it to 1 (make sure you get the * at the beginning of the name, I missed that the first time).
  5. Disable and Enable each of the network adapters.

That should take care of the problem. Setting *NdisDeviceType to 1 causes Windows to ignore the device when it does network identification. Here is an MSDN article with more details.

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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }

ncux February 28, 2009 at 4:21 pm

Thanks!!!

Jon June 18, 2009 at 8:45 am

I wonder if there is way to change the label “Unidentified Network” to something else and furthermore, change the icon in Windows 7 like we could on Vista

Scott July 31, 2009 at 9:56 pm

Great post. Saved me from spending another 3-4 hours looking for a fix!

Kevin October 19, 2009 at 5:59 am

thx a lot. Did me a good job.
I’ve been troubling by this for long

Jschae November 15, 2009 at 4:26 pm

Awesome! Saved me endless time.

Robbie January 14, 2010 at 1:11 pm

Thanks for the solution. I had this problem on Vista and Windows 7 and somehow (maybe because of an update) the problem returned on Windows 7. And again a quick fix.

Thiti January 14, 2010 at 9:15 pm

Thank you very much. I have been searching for this for almost 6 months! I really wonder why VMware has not fixed this issue in its recent releases.

Thiti January 14, 2010 at 9:16 pm

I forgot to mention that this “*NdisDeviceType =1″ tip works in my installation of Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit edition as well.

Thiti January 26, 2010 at 4:32 am

I also have similar problem with VirtualBox 3.1.2-5612 and this trick also works.

Matteo January 26, 2010 at 6:42 am

I have done this vmnet is abilited but still i haven’t access to internet on guest system…

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